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jflohnlE'Cameron 


IN  PARTNERSHIP. 


IN  PARTNERSHIP 


STUDIES  IN  STORY-TELLING 
BY  BRANDER  MATTHEWS  AND  H.  C.  BUNNER 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
1884 


COPYRIGHT,  1884,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS. 


CONTENTS. 


PAQB 

THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  TUB  CASE 3 

By  Brander  Matthews  and  H.  C.  Bunner. 

VENETIAN  GLASS 48 

By  Brander  Matthews. 

THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF 73 

By  H.  C.  Bunner. 

THE   SEVEN   CONVERSATIONS   OP   DEAR   JONES   AND 
BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER 115 

By  Brander  Matthews  and  H.  C.  Bunner. 

THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS 139 

By  Brander  Matthews. 

A  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH 165 

By  H.  C.  Bunner. 

PLAYING  A  PART >*....    179 

By  Brander  Matthews. 

LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES 196 

By  H.  C.  Bunner. 


THE   DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

BY 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS  AND  H.  C.  BUNNER. 


PART    FIRST. 

Uocumtnt  TSo»  1. 

Paragraph  from  the  '•'•Illustrated  London  News"  pub- 
lished under  the  head  of  "Obituary  of  Eminent 
Persons"  in  the  issue  of  January  ^th,  1879  : 

SIR   WILLIAM   BEAUVOIR,    BART. 

Sir  William  Beauvoir,  Bart.,  whose  lamented  death 
has  just  occurred  at  Brighton,  on  December  28th,  was 
the  head  and  representative  of  the  junior  branch  of 
the  very  ancient  and  honourable  family  of  Beauvoir, 
and  was  the  only  son  of  the  late  General  Sir  William 
Beauvoir,  Bart.,  by  his  wife  Anne,  daughter  of  Colonel 
Doyle,  of  Chelsworth  Cottage,  Suffolk.  He  was  born 
in  1805,  and  was  educated  at  Eton  and  Trinity  Hall, 
Cambridge.  He  was  M.  P.  for  Lancashire  from  1837 
to  1847,  and  was  appointed  a  Gentleman  of  the  Privy 

3 


4  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

Chamber  in  1843.  Sir  William  married,  in  1826,  Hen- 
rietta Georgian  a,  fourth  daughter  of  the  Right  Honour- 
able Adolphus  Liddell,  Q.  C.,  by  whom  he  had  two  sons, 
William  Beauvoir  and  Oliver  Liddell  Beauvoir.  The 
latter  was  with  his  lamented  parent  when  he  died.  Of 
the  former  nothing  has  been  heard  for  nearly  thirty 
years,  about  which  time  he  left  England  suddenly  for 
America.  It  is  supposed  that  he  went  to  California, 
shortly  after  the  discovery  of  gold.  Much  forgotten 
gossip  will  now  in  all  probability  be  revived,  for  the 
will  of  the  lamented  baronet  has  been  proved,  on  the 
2d  inst.,  and  the  personalty  sworn  under  £70,000.  The 
two  sons  are  appointed  executors.  The  estate  in  Lan- 
cashire is  left  to  the  elder,  and  the  rest  is  divided 
between  the  brothers.  The  doubt  as  to  the  career 
of  Sir  William's  eldest  son  must  now  of  course  be 
cleared  up. 

This  family  of  Beauvoirs  is  of  Norman  descent,  and 
of  great  antiquity.  This  is  the  younger  branch,  founded 
in  the  last  century  by  Sir  William  Beauvoir,  Bart., 
who  was  Chief  Justice  of  the  Canadas,  whence  he  was 
granted  the  punning  arms  and  motto  now  borne  by  his 
descendants  —  a  beaver  sable  rampant  on  a  field  gules ; 
motto,  "Damno." 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  TIIE  CASE.  5 

PART    SECOND. 

Document  No.  2. 

Promises  to  pay,  put  forth  5y  William  Beauvoir, 
junior,  at  various  times  in  1848 : 


I.  O.  U. 

£105.  o.  o. 
April  loth,  1848. 

William  Beauvoir,  junr. 


Document  "No.  3, 
The  same. 


/.  O.  U. 

£250.  o.  o. 
April  22d,  1848. 

William  Beauvoir,  junr. 


Document  X0.  4, 
The  same. 


I.  O.  U. 

£600.  o.  o. 
May  loth,  1848. 

William  Beauvoir,  junr. 


6  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

Document  Wo,  5. 

Extract  from  the  "Sunday  Satirist"  a  journal  of  high- 
life^  published  in  London,  May  13th,  18^8  : 

Are  not  our  hereditary  lawmakers  and  the  members 
of  our  old  families  the  guardians  of  the  honour  of  this 
realm?  One  would  not  think  so  to  see  the  reckless 
gait  at  which  some  of  them  go  down  the  road  to  ruin. 

The  D e  of  D m  and  the  E 1  of  B n  and 

L d  Y g,  —  are  not  these  pretty  guardians  of  a 

nation's  name  ?  Quis  custodiet  ?  etc.  Guardians, 
forsooth,  parce  quails  se  sont  donnes  la  peine  de 
naitre!  Some  of  the  gentry  make  the  running  as  well 

as  their  betters.     Young  W m  B r,  son  of  old 

Sir  W m  B r,  late  M.  P.  for  L e,  is  a  truly 

model  young  man.  He  comes  of  a  good  old  county 
family  —  his  mother  was  a  daughter  of  the  Right  Hon- 
ourable A -s  L 1,  and  he  himself  is  old  enough 

to  know  better.  But  we  hear  of  his  escapades  night 
after  night,  and  day  after  day.  He  bets  all  day  and  he 
plays  all  night,  and  poor  tired  nature  has  to  make  the 
best  of  it.  And  his  poor  worn  purse  gets  the  worst  of 
it.  He  has  duns  by  the  score.  His  I.  O.  U.'s  are  held 
by  every  Jew  in  the  city.  He  is  not  content  with  a 
little  gentlemanlike  game  of  whist  or  ecarte,  but  he 
must  needs  revive  for  his  special  use  and  behoof  the 
dangerous  and  well-nigh  forgotten  pharaoh.  As  luck 
would  have  it,  he  had  lost  as  much  at  this  game  of 
brute  chance  as  ever  he  would  at  any  game  of  skill. 
His  judgment  of  horseflesh  is  no  better  than  his  luck 
at  cards.  He  came  a  cropper  over  the  "  Two  Thousand 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  ^ 

Guineas."  The  victory  of  the  favourite  cost  him  to 
the  tune  of,  over  six  thousand  pounds.  We  learn  that 
he  hopes  to  recoup  himself  on  the  Derby,  by  backing 
Shylock  for  nearly  nine  thousand  pounds ;  one  bet  was 
twelve  hundred  guineas. 

And  this  is  the  sort  of  man  who  may  be  chosen  at 
any  time  by  force  of  family  interest  to  make  laws  for 
the  toiling  millions  of  Great  Britain ! 

IBocument  Wo.  6. 
Extract  from  "BeWs  Life"  of  May  19th,  1848: 

THE    DEKBY   DAY. 

WEDNESDAY. — This  day,  like  its  predecessor,  opened 
with  a  cloudless  sky,  and  the  throng  which  crowded 
the  avenues  leading  to  the  grand  scene  of  attraction 
was,  as  we  have  elsewhere  remarked,  incalculable. 

THE    DERBY. 

The  Derby  Stakes  of  50  sovs.  each,  h.  ft.  for  three-year- 
olds  ;  colts,  8  st.  7  lb.,  fillies,  8  st.  2  Ib. ;  the  second 
to  receive  100  sovs.,  and  the  winner  to  pay  100  sovs. 
towards  police,  etc.;  mile  and  a  half  on  the  new 
Derby  course ;  215  subs. 

Lord  Clifden's  b.  c.  Surplice,  by  Touchstone  ...  1 

Mr.  Bowe's  b.  c.  Springy  Jack,  by  Hetman  ...  2 

Mr.  B.  Green's  br.  c.  Shylock,  by  Simoon  ....  3 

Mr.  Payne's  b.  c.  Glendower,  by  Slane 0 

Mr.  J.  P.  Day's  b.  c.  Nil  Desperandum,  by  Venison  .  0 


8  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

Qocutnent  Wo.  7. 

Paragraph  of  Shipping  Intelligence  from  the  "  Liver- 
pool Courier"  of  June  21st,  1848: 

The  bark  Euterpe,  Captain  Riding,  belonging  to  the 
Transatlantic  Clipper  Line  of  Messrs.  Judkins  &  Cooke, 
left  the  Mersey  yesterday  afternoon,  bound  for  New 
York.  She  took  out  the  usual  complement  of  steerage 
passengers.  The  first  officer's  cabin  is  occupied  by 
Professor  Titus  Peebles,  M.R.C.S.,  M.R.G.S.,  lately 
instructor  in  metallurgy  at  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh, and  Mr.  William  Beauvoir.  Professor  Peebles, 
we  are  informed,  has  an  important  scientific  mission  in 
the  States,  and  will  not  return  for  six  months. 

JBoctinwnt  Wo.  8. 

Paragraph  from  the  "  N~.  Y.  Herald"  of  September 
9th,  1848. 

While  we  well  know  that  the  record  of  vice  and 
dissipation  can  never  be  pleasing  to  the  refined  tastes 
of  the  cultivated  denizens  of  the  only  morally  pure 
metropolis  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  yet  it  may  be  of 
interest  to  those  who  enjoy  the  fascinating  study  of 
human  folly  and  frailty  to  "point  a  moral  or  adorn 
a  tale  "  from  the  events  transpiring  in  our  very  midst. 
Such  as  these  will  view  with  alarm  the  sad  example 
afforded  the  youth  of  our  city  by  the  dissolute  career 
of  a  young  lump  of  aristocratic  affectation  and  patri- 
cian profligacy,  recently  arrived  in  this  city.  This 
young  gentleman's  (save  the  mark !)  name  is  Lord 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  9 

William  F.  Beauvoir,  the  latest  scion  of  a  venerable 
and  wealthy  English  family.  We  print  the  full  name 
of  this  beautiful  exemplar  of  "haughty  Albion,"  al- 
though he  first  appeared  among  our  citizens  under  the 
alias  of  Beaver,  by  which  name  he  is  now  generally 
known,  although  recorded  on  the  books  of  the  Astor 
House  by  the  name  which  our  enterprise  first  gives  Tto 
the  public.  Lord  Beauvoir's  career  since  his  arrival 
here  has  been  one  of  unexampled  extravagance  and 
mad  immorality.  His  days  and  nights  have  been 
passed  in  the  gilded  palaces  of  the  fickle  goddess, 
Fortune,  in  Thomas  Street  and  College  Place,  where 
he  has  squandered  fabulous  sums,  by*  some  stated  to 
amount  to  over  £78,000  sterling.  It  is  satisfactory  to 
know  that  retribution  has  at  last  overtaken  him.  His 
enormous  income  has  been  exhausted  to  the  ultimate 
farthing,  and  at  latest  accounts  he  had  quit  the  city, 
leaving  behind  him,  it  is  shrewdly  suspected,  a  large 
hotel  bill,  though  no  such  admission  can  be  extorted 
from  his  last  landlord,  who  is  evidently  a  sycophantic 
adulator  of  British  "  aristocracy." 


10  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 


JBontment  No.  9. 

Certificate  of  deposit,  vulgarly  known  as  a  pawn- 
ticket^  issued  by  one  Simpson  to  William  Jfeauvoir, 
December  2d,  1848. 

John  Simpson, 

Loan  Office, 

36  Bowery, 

New  York. 

Dec.  2d,  1848. 


One  Gold  Hunting-case  Watch  and  Chain, 

Dolls. 

150 

Cts. 

oo 

William  Beauvoir. 

Not  accountable  in  case  of  fire,  damage,  moth,  robbery,  breakage.  &c. 
25,%  per  ann.  Good  for  1  year  only. 


JBocttment  No.  10. 

Letter  from  the  late  John  Phwnix,  found  among  the 
posthumous  papers  of  the  late  John  P.  Squibob,  and 
promptly  published  in  the  "  San  Diego  Herald" 

OFF  THE  COAST  OF  FLORIDA,  Jan.  3*1849. 
MY  DEAR  SQUIB  :  —  I  imagine  your  pathetic  inquiry 
as  to  my  whereabouts  —  pathetic,  not  to  say  hypo- 
thetic —  for  I  am  now  where  I  cannot  hear  the  dulcet 
strains  of  your  voice.  I  am  on  board  ship.  I  am  half 
seas  over.  I  am  bound  for  California  by  way  of  the 
Isthmus.  I  am  going  for  the  gold,  my  boy,  the  gold. 
In  the  mean  time  I  am  lying  around  loose  on  the  deck 
of  this  magnificent  vessel,  the  Mercy  G.  Tarbox,  of 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  H 

Nantucket,  bred  by  Noah's  ArJc  out  of  Pilot-boat,  dam 
by  Mudscow  out  of  Raging  CanawL  The  Mercy  G. 
Tarbox  is  one  of  the  best  boats  of  Nantucket,  and 
Captain  Clearstarch  is  one  of  the  best  captains  all 
along  shore  —  although,  friend  Squibob,  I  feel  sure 
that  you  are  about  to  observe  that  a  captain  with  a 
name  like  that  would  give  anyone  the  blues.  But 
don't  do  it,  Squib !  Spare  me  this  once. 

But  as  a  matter  of  fact  this  ultramarine  joke  of  yours 
is  about  east.  It  was  blue  on  the  Mercy  G.  —  mighty 
blue,  too.  And  it  needed  the  inspiring  hope  of  the 
gold  I  was  soon  to  pick  up  in  nuggets  to  stiffen  my 
backbone  to  a  respectable  degree  of  rigidity.  I  was 
about  ready  to  wilt.  But  I  discovered  two  English- 
men on  board,  and  now  I  get  along  all  right.  We 
have  formed  a  little  temperance  society  —  just  we 
three,  you  know  —  to  see  if  we  cannot,  by  a  course  of 
sampling  and  severe  study,  discover  which  of  the  cap- 
tain's liquors  is  most  dangerous,  so  that  we  can  take 
the  pledge  not  to  touch  it.  One  of  them  is  a  chemist 
or  a  metallurgist,  or  something  scientific.  The  other 
is  a  gentleman. 

The  chemist  or  metallurgist  or  something  scientific 
is  Professor  Titus  Peebles,  who  is  going  out  to  pros- 
pect for  gold.  He  feels  sure  that  his  professional 
training  will  give  him  the  inside  track  in  the  gulches 
and  gold  mines.  He  is  a  smart  chap.  He  invented 
the  celebrated  "William  Riley  Baking  Powder"  — 
bound  to  rise  up  every  time.  «, 

And  here  I  must  tell  you  a  little  circumstance.  As 
I  was  coming  down  to  the  dock  in  New  York,  to  go 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


12  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

aboard  the  Mercy  <r.,  a  small  boy  was  walloping  a  boy 
still  smaller ;  so  I  made  peace,  and  walloped  them  both. 
And  then  they  both  began  heaving  rocks  at  me  — 
one  of  which  I  caught  dexterously  in  the  dexter  hand. 
Yesterday,  as  I  was  pacing  the  deck  with  the  professor, 
I  put  my  hand  in  my  pocket  and  found  this  stone.  So 
I  asked  the  professor  what  it  was. 

He  looked  at  it  and  said  it  was  gneiss. 

"Is  it?"  said  I.  "Well,  if  a  small  but  energetic 
youth  had  taken  you  on  the  back  of  the  head  with  it, 
you  would  not  think  it  so  nice !  " 

And  then,  O  Squib,  he  set  out  to  explain  that  he 
meant  "  gneiss,"  not  "  nice ! "  The  ignorance  of  these 
English  about  a  joke  is  really  wonderful.  It  is  easy 
to  see  that  they  have  never  been  brought  up  on  them. 
But  perhaps  there  was  some  excuse  for  the  professor 
that  day,  for  he  was  the  president  pro  tern,  of  our  pro- 
jected temperance  society,  and  as  such  he  had  been 
making  a  quantitative  and  qualitative  analysis  of  another 
kind  of  quartz. 

So  much  for  the  chemist  or  metallurgist  or  something 
scientific.  The  gentleman  and  I  get  on  better.  His 
name  is  Beaver,  which  he  persists  in  spelling  Beauvoir. 
Ridiculous,  is  n't  it  ?  How  easy  it  is  to  see  that  the 
English  have  never  had  the  advantage  of  a  good 
common-school  education  —  so  few  of  them  can  spell. 
Here 's  a  man  don't  know  how  to  spell  his  own  name. 
And  this  shows  how  the  race  over  there  on  the  little 
.island  is  degenerating.  It  was  not  so  in  other  days. 
Shakspere,  for  instance,  not  only  knew  how  to  spell 
his  own  name,  but  —  and  this  is  another  proof  of  his 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  13 

superiority  to  his  contemporaries  —  lie  could  spell  it  in 
half  a  dozen  different  ways. 

This  Beaver  is  a  clever  fellow,  and  we  get  on  first 
rate  together.  He  is  going  to  California  for  gold  — 
like  the  rest  of  us.  But  I  think  he  has  had  his  share 
—  and  spent  it.  At  any  rate  he  has  not  much  now. 
I  have  been  teaching  him  poker,  and  I  am  afraid  he 
won't  have  any  soon.  I  have  an  idea  he  has  been 
going  pretty  fast  —  and  mostly  down  hill.  But  he 
has  his  good  points.  He  is  a  gentleman  all  through, 
as  you  can  see.  Yes,  friend  Squibob,  even  you  could 
see  right  through  him.  "We  are  all  going  to  California 
together,  and  I  wonder  which  one  of  the  three  will 
turn  up  trumps  first  —  Beaver,  or  the  chemist,  metal- 
lurgist or  something  scientific,  or 

Yours  respectfully,  JOHN  PHOSNIX. 

P.  S.  —  You  think  this  a  stupid  letter,  perhaps,  and 
not  interesting.  Just  reflect  on  my  surroundings.  Be- 
sides, the  interest  will  accumulate  a  good  while  before 
you  get  the  missive.  And  I  don't  know  how  you  ever 
are  to  get  it,  for  there  is  no  post-office  near  here,  and 
on  the  Isthmus  the  mails  are  as  uncertain  as  the  females 
are  everywhere.  (I  am  informed  that  there  is  no  postage 
on  old  jokes  —  so  I  let  that  stand.)  J.  P. 

Document  No.  11. 

Extract  from  the  "  JBone   Gulch  Palladium"  June 
3d,  1850: 

Our  readers  may  remember  how  frequently  we 
have  declared  our  firm  belief  in  the  future  unexampled 


14  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

prosperity  of  Bone  Gulch.  VYe  saw  it  in  the  imme- 
diate future  the  metropolis  of  the  Pacific  Slope,  as  it  was 
intended  by  nature  to  be.  We  pointed  out  repeatedly 
that  a  time  would  come  when  Bone  Gulch  would  be 
an  emporium  of  the  arts  and  sciences  and  of  the  best 
society,  even  more  than  it  is  now.  We  foresaw  the 
time  when  the  best  men  from  the  old  cities  of  the 
East  would  come  flocking  to  us,  passing  with  con- 
tempt the  puny  settlement  of  Deadhorse.  But  even 
we  did  not  so  soon  see  that  members  of  the  aristoc- 
racy of  the  effete  monarchies  of  despotic  Europe  would 
acknowledge  the  undeniable  advantages  of  Bone 
Gulch,  and  come  here  to  stay  permanently  and  for- 
ever. Within  the  past  week  we  have  received  here 
Hon.  William  Beaver,  one  of  the  first  men  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  a  statesman,  an  orator,  a  soldier, 
and  an  extensive  traveller.  He  has  come  to  Bone 
Gulch  as  the  best  spot  on  the  face  of  the  everlasting 
universe.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  our  prominent 
citizens  have  received  him  with  great  cordiality.  Bone 
Gulch  is  not  like  Deadhorse.  We  know  a  gentleman 
when  we  see  one. 

Hon.  Mr.  Beaver  is  one  of  nature's  noblemen ;  he  is 
also  related  to  the  Royal  Family  of  England.  He  is  a 
second  cousin  of  the  Queen,  and  boards  at  the  Tower 
of  London  with  her  when  at  home.  We  are  in- 
formed that  he  has  frequently  taken  the  Prince  of 
Wales  out  for  a  ride  in  his  baby- wagon. 

We  take  great  pleasure  in  congratulating  Bone 
Gulch  on  its  latest  acquisition.  And  we  know  Hon. 
Mr.  Beaver  is  sure  to  get  along  all  right  here  under 


TUE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.      15 

the  best  climate  in  the  world  and  with  the  noblest 
men  the  sun  ever  shone  on. 


document  $T0.  12. 

Extract  from  the  Dead  Horse  "  Gazette  and  Courier 
of  Civilization  "  of  August  26th,  1850: 

BONEGULCH'S  BRITISHER. 

Bonegulch  sits  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  and  cools  her 
mammoth  cheek  in  the  breezes  of  Colorado  canyon. 
The  self-styled  Emporium  of  the  West  has  lost  her 
British  darling,  Beaver  Bill,  the  big  swell  who  was  first 
cousin  to  the  Marquis  of  Buckingham  and  own  grand- 
mother to  the  Emperor  of  China,  the  man  with  the 
biled  shirt  and  low-necked  shoes.  This  curled  darling 
of  the  Bonegulch  aristocrat- worshippers  passed  through 
Deadhorse  yesterday,  clean  bust.  Those  who  remem- 
ber how  the  four-fingered  editor  of  the  Bonegulch 
"  Palladium  "  pricked  up  his  ears  and  lifted  up  his  fal- 
setto crow  when  this  lovely  specimen  of  the  British 
snob  first  honored  him  by  striking  him  for  a  $  will 
appreciate  the  point  of  the  joke. 

It  is  said  that  the  "Palladium"  is  going  to  come 
out,  when  it  makes  its  next  semi-occasional  appearance, 
in  full  mourning,  with  turned  rules.  For  this  festive 
occasion  we  offer  Brother  B.  the  use  of  our  late  retired 
Spanish  font,  which  we  have  discarded  for  the  new  and 
elegant  dress  in  which  we  appear  to-day,  and  to  which 
we  have  elsewhere  called  the  attention  of  our  readers. 
It  will  be  a  change  for  the  "  Palladium's  "  eleven  un- 
happy readers,  who  are  getting  very  tired  of  the  old 


16  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

type  cast  for  the  Concha  Mission  in  1811,  which  tries 
to  make  up  for  its  lack  of  w's  by  a  plentiful  superfluity 
of  greaser  u's.  How  are  you,  Brother  Biles  ? 

"We  don't  know  a  gent  when  we  see  him."  Oh 
no  (?) ! 

JBaoimntt  "No.  13. 

Paragraph  from  "Police  Court  Notes"  in  the  New 
Centreville  [late  Dead  Horse']  Evening  Gazette" 
January  M>  1858 : 

HYMENEAL   HIGH   JINKS. 

William  Beaver,  better  known  ten  years  ago  as 
"  Beaver  Bill,"  is  now  a  quiet  and  prosperous  agricul- 
turalist in  the  Steal  Valley.  He  was,  however,  a 
pioneer  in  the  1849  movement,  and  a  vivid  memory  of 
this  fact  at  times  moves  him  to  quit  his  bucolic  labors 
and  come  in  town  for  a  real  old-fashioned  tare.  He 
arrived  in  New  Centreville  during  Christmas  week; 
and  got  married  suddenly,  but  not  unexpectedly,  yes- 
terday morning.  His  friends  took  it  upon  themselves 
to  celebrate  the  joyful  occasion,  rare  in  the  experience 
of  at  least  one  of  the  parties,  by  getting  very  high  on 
Irish  Ike's  whiskey  and  serenading  the  newly-married 
couple  with  fish-horns,  horse-fiddles,  and  other  impro- 
vised musical  instruments.  Six  of  the  participators  in 
this  epithalamial  serenade,  namely,  Jose  Tanco,  Hiram 
Scuttles,  John  P.  Jones,  Hermann  Bumgardner,  Jean 
Durant  ("Frenchy"),  and  Bernard  McGinnis  ("Big 
Barney"),  were  taken  in  tow  by  the  police  force,  assisted 
by  citizens,  and  locked  up  over  night,  to  cool  their  gen~ 
erous  enthusiasm  in  the  gloomy  dungeons  of  Justice 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  17 

Skinner's  calaboose.  This  morning  all  were  discharged 
with  a  reprimand,  except  Big  Barney  and  Jose  Tanco, 
who,  being  still  drunk,  were  allotted  ten  days  in  default 
of  $10.  The  bridal  pair  left  this  noon  for  the  bride- 
groom's ranch. 

JBocument  No.  14. 

Mctract  from  "The  New  York  Herald"  for  June  23d, 
1861  : 

THE   EED   SKINS. 

A   BORDER   WAR   AT   LAST! 


INDIAN  INSURRECTION. 


RED  DEVILS  RISING! 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  SEEKING  SAFETY  IN  THE  LARGER 
TOWNS. 

HORRIBLE  HOLOCAUSTS  ANTICIPATED. 


BURYING  THE  HATCHET  —  IN  THE  WHITE  MAN'S  HEAD. 


[SPECIAL  DESPATCH  TO  THE  NEW  YORK  HERALD.] 

CHICAGO,  June  22,  1861. 

Great  uneasiness  exists  all  along  the  Indian  frontier. 
Nearly  all  the  regular  troops  have  been  withdrawn  from 
the  West  for  service  in  the  South.  With  the  return 
of  the  warm  weather  it  seems  certain  that  the  red  skins 
will  take  advantage  of  the  opportunity  thus  offered, 
and  inaugurate  a  bitter  and  vindictive  fight  against  the 
whites.  Rumors  come  from  the  agencies  that  the 


18  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

Indians  are  leaving  in  numbers.  A  feverish  excite- 
ment among  them  has  been  easily  to  be  detected. 
Their  ponies  are  now  in  good  condition,  and  forage 
can  soon  be  had  in  abundance  on  the  prairie,  if  it  is  not 
already.  Everything  points  toward  a  sudden  and 
startling  outbreak  of  hostilities. 

[SPECIAL  DESPATCH  TO  THE  NEW  YORK  HERALD.] 

ST.  PAUL,  June  22,  1861. 

The  Sioux  near  here  are  all  in  a  ferment.  Expe- 
rienced Indian  fighters  say  the  signs  of  a  speedy  going 
on  the  war-path  are  not  to  be  mistaken.  No  one  can 
tell  how  soon  the  whole  frontier  may  be  in  a  bloody 
blaze.  The  women  and  children  are  rapidly  coming  in 
from  all  exposed  settlements.  Nothing  overt  as  yet 
has  transpired,  but  that  the  Indians  will  collide  very 
soon  with  the  settlers  is  certain.  All  the  troops  have 
been  withdrawn.  In  our  defenceless  state  there  is  no 
knowing  how  many  lives  may  be  lost  before  the  regi- 
ments of  volunteers  now  organizing  can  take  the  field. 

LATEE. 

THE  WAR  BEGUN. 


FIRST  BLOOD  FOR  THE  INDIANS, 

THE  SCALPING  KNIFE  AND  THE  TOMAHAWK  AT  WORK  AGAIN. 


[SPECIAL  DESPATCH  TO  THE  NEW  YORK  HERALD.] 

BLACK  WING  AGENCY,  June  22,  1861. 
The  Indians  made  a  sudden  and  unexpected  attack 
on  the  town  of  Coyote  Hill,  forty  miles  from  here,  last 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  19 

night,  and  did  much  damage  before  the  surprised  set- 
tlers rallied  and  drove  them  off.  The  red  skins  met 
with  heavy  losses.  Among  the  whites  killed  are  a  man 
named  William  Beaver,  sometimes  called  Beaver  Bill, 
and  his  wife.  Their  child,  a  beautiful  little  girl  of  two, 
was  carried  off  by  the  red  rascals.  A  party  has  been 
made  up  to  pursue  them.  Owing  to  their  taking  their 
wounded  with  them,  the  trail  is  very  distinct. 

IBocumcnt  No.  15. 

Letter  from  Mrs.  Edgar  SaviHe,  in  San  Francisco, 
to  Mr.  Edgar  Samlle,  in  Chicago. 

- '""**«» 

MONSTER  VARIETY  AND  DRAMATIC  COMBINATION. 

ON    THE    ROAD. 


G.  W.  K.  McCULLUM, 

Treasurer. 
HI.  SAMUELS, 

Stage  Manager. 


JNO.  SHANKS> 


Advance. 


No  dates  filled  except  with  first- 
class  houses. 

Hall  owners  will  please  consider 
silence  a  polite  negative. 


SAN  FRANCISCO,  January  29,  1863. 

MY  DEAR  OLD  MAN  !  —  Here  we  are  in  our  second 
week  at  Frisco  and  you  will  be  glad  to  know  playing 
to  steadily  increasing  biz,  having  signed  for  two  weeks 
more,  certain.  I  did  n't  like  to  mention  it  when  I  wrote 
you  last,  but  things  were  very  queer  after  we  left 
Denver,  and  "  Treasury  "  was  a  mockery  till  we  got  to 
Bluefoot  Springs,  which  is  a  mining  town,  where  we 
showed  in  the  hotel  dining-room.  Then  there  was  a 


20  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

strike  just  before  the  curtain  went  up.  The  house  was 
mostly  miners  in  red  shirts  and  very  exacting.  The 
sinews  were  forthcoming  very  quick  my  dear,  and  after 
that  the  ghost  walked  quite  regular.  So  now  every- 
thing is  bright,  and  you  won't  have  to  worry  if  Chicago 
does  n't  do  the  right  thing  by  you. 

I  don't  find  this  engagement  half  as  disagreeable  as 
I  expected.  Of  course  it  ain't  so  very  nice  travelling 
in  a  combination  with  variety  talent  but  they  keep  to 
themselves  and  we  regular  professionals  make  a  happy 
family  that  Barnum  would  not  be  ashamed  of  and 
quite  separate  and  comfortable.  We  don't  associate 
with  any  of  them  only  with  The  Unique  Mulligans 
wife,  because  he  beats  her.  So  when  he  is  on  a  regular 
she  sleeps  with  me. 

And  talking  of  liquor  dear  old  man,  if  you  knew 
how  glad  and  proud  I  was  to  see  you  writing  so 
straight  and  steady  and  beautiful  in  your  three  last 
letters.  O,  I  'm  sure  my  darling  if  the  boys  thought  of 
the  little  wife  out  on  the  road  they  would  n't  plague 
you  so  with  the  Enemy.  Tell  Harry  Atkinson  this 
from  me,  he  has  a  good  kind  heart  but  he  is  the  worst 
of  your  friends.  Every  night  when  I  am  dressing  I 
think  of  you  at  Chicago,  and  pray  you  may  never 
again  go  on  the  way  you  did  that  terrible  night  at 
Rochester.  Tell  me  dear,  did  you  look  handsome  in 
Horatio  ?  You  ought  to  have  had  Laertes  instead  of 
that  duffing  Merivale. 

And  now  I  have  the  queerest  thing  to  tell  you. 
Jardine  is  going  in  for  Indians  and  has  secured  six 
very  ugly  ones.  I  mean  real  Indians,  not  professional. 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  21 

They  are  hostile  Comanshies  or  something  who  have 
just  laid  down  their  arms.  They  had  an  insurrection 
in  the  first  year  of  the  War,  when  the  troops  went 
East,  and  they  killed  all  the  settlers  and  ranches  and 
destroyed  the  canyons  somewhere  out  in  Nevada,  and 
when  they  were  brought  here  they  had  a  wee  little  kid 
with  them  only  four  or  five  years  old,  but  so  sweet. 
They  stole  her  and  killed  her  parents  and  brought  her 
up  for  their  own  in  the  cunningest  little  moccasins. 
She  could  not  speak  a  word  of  English  except  her  own 
name  which  is  Nina.  She  has  blue  eyes  and  all  her 
second  teeth.  The  ladies  here  made  a  great  fuss  about 
her  and  sent  her  flowers  and  worsted  afgans,  but  they 
did  not  do  anything  else  for  her  and  left  her  to  us. 

O  dear  old  man  you  must  let  me  have  her!  You 
never  refused  me  a  thing  yet  and  she  is  so  like  our 
Avonia  Marie  that  my  heart  almost  breaks  when  she 
puts  her  arms  around  my  neck  —  she  calls  me  mamma 
already.  I  want  to  have  her  with  us  when  we  get  the 
little  farm  —  and  it  must  be  near,  that  little  farm  of 
ours  —  we  have  waited  for  it  so  long  —  and  something 
tells  me  my  own  old  faker  will  make  his  hit  soon  and 
be  great.  You  can't  tell  how  I  have  loved  it  and 
hoped  for  it  and  how  real  every  foot  of  that  farm  is  to 
me.  And  though  I  can  never  see  my  own  darling's 
face  among  the  roses  it  will  make  me  so  happy  to  see 
this  poor  dead  mother's  pet  get  red  and  rosy  in  the 
country  air.  And  till  the  farm  comes  we  shall  always 
have  enough  for  her,  without  your  ever  having  to  black 
up  again  as  you  did  for  me  the  winter  I  was  sick  my 
own  poor  boy ! 


22  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

Write  me  yes  —  you  will  be  glad  when  you  see  her. 
And  now  love  and  regards  to  Mrs.  Barry  and  all  friends. 
Tell  the  Worst  of  Managers  that  he  knows  where  to 
find  his  leading  juvenile  for  next  season.  Think  how 
funny  it  would  be  for  us  to  play  together  next  year  — 
we  have  n't  done  it  since  '57  — the  third  year  we  were 
married.  That  was  my  first  season  higher  than  walk- 
ing —  and  now  I  'm  quite  an  old  woman  —  most  thirty 
dear! 

Write  me  soon  a  letter  like  that  last  one  —  and  send 
a  kiss  to  Mna —  our  Nina. 

Your  own  girl, 

MAEY. 

P.  S.    He  has  not  worried  me  since. 


Nina  drew  this  herself  she  says  it  is  a  horse  so  that 
you  can  get  here  soon. 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  23 

PART    THIRD. 

JBoctitnent  No*  16. 

Letter  from  Messrs.  Throstlethwaite,  Throstlethwaite, 
and  Dick)  Solicitors,  Lincoln's  fan,  London,  Eng- 
land, to  Messrs.  Hitchcock  and  Van  Rensselaer, 
Attorneys  and  Counsellors  at  Law,  76  Broadway, 

New  York,  U.  S.  A. 

January  8,  1879. 

Messrs.  HITCHCOCK  &  VAN  RENSSELAER  : 

GENTLEMEN:  On  the  death  of  our  late  client,  Sir 
William  Beauvoir,  Bart.,  and  after  the  reading  of  the 
deceased  gentleman's  will,  drawn  up  nearly  forty  years 
ago  by  our  Mr.  Dick,  we  were  requested  by  Oliver 
Beauvoir,  Esq.,  the  second  son  of  the  late  Sir  William, 
to  assist  him  in  discovering  and  communicating  with 
his  elder  brother,  the  present  Sir  William  Beauvoir, 
of  whose  domicile  we  have  little  or  no  informa- 
tion. 

After  a  consultation  between  Mr.  Oliver  Beauvoir 
and  our  Mr.  Dick,  it  was  seen  that  the  sole  knowledge 
in  our  possession  amounted  substantially  to  this: 
Thirty  years  ago  the  elder  son  of  the  late  baronet, 
after  indulging  in  dissipation  in  every  possible  form, 
much  to  the  sorrow  of  his  respected  parent,  who  fre- 
quently expressed  as  much  to  our  Mr.  Dick,  disappeared, 
leaving  behind  him  bills  and  debts  of  all  descriptions, 
which  we,  under  instructions  from  Sir  William,  exam- 
ined, audited,  and  paid.  Sir  William  Beauvoir  would 
allow  no  search  to  be  made  for  his  erring  son  and 
would  listen  to  no  mention  of  his  name.  Current 


24  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

gossip  declared  that  he  had  gone  to  New  York,  where 
he  probably  arrived  about  midsummer,  1848.  Mr. 
Oliver  Beauvoir  thinks  that  he  crossed  to  the  States 
in  company  with  a  distinguished  scientific  gentleman, 
Professor  Titus  Peebles.  Within  a  year  after  his 
departure  news  came  that  he  had  gone  to  California 
with  Professor  Peebles ;  this  was  about  the  time  gold 
was  discovered  in  the  States.  That  the  present  Sir 
William  Beauvoir  did  about  this  time  actually  arrive 
on  the  Pacific  Coast  in  company  with  the  distinguished 
scientific  man  above  mentioned,  we  have  every  reason 
to  believe :  we  have  even  direct  evidence  on  the  subject. 
A  former  junior  clerk,  who  had  left  us  at  about  the 
same  period  as  the  disappearance  of  the  elder  son  of 
our  late  client,  accosted  our  Mr.  Dick  when  the  latter 
was  in  Paris  last  summer,  and  informed  him  (our  Mr. 
Dick)  that  he  (the  former  junior  clerk)  was  now  a 
resident  of  Nevada  and  a  member  of  Congress  for  that 
county,  and  in  the  course  of  conversation  he  men- 
tioned that  he  had  seen  Professor  Peebles  and  the  son 
of  our  late  client  in  San  Francisco,  nearly  thirty  years 
ago.  Other  information  we  have  none.  It  ought  not 
to  be  difficult  to  discover  Professor  Peebles,  whose 
scientific  attainments  have  doubtless  ere  this  been  duly 
recognized  by  the  U.  S.  government.  As  our  late 
client  leaves  the  valuable  family  estate  in  Lancashire 
to  his -elder  son  and  divides  the  remainder  equally 
between  his  two  sons,  you  will  readily  see  why  we 
invoke  your  assistance  in  discovering  the  present  domi- 
cile of  the  late  baronet's  elder  son,  or,  in  default  thereof, 
in  placing  in  our  hand  such  proof  of  his  death  as  may 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE  25 

be  necessary  to  establish  that  lamentable  fact  in  our 
probate  court. 

We  have  the  honour  to  remain,  as  ever,  your  most 
humble  and  obedient  servants, 

THKOSTLETHWAITE,  THBOSTLETHWAITE,  &  DICK. 

P.  S.  —  Our  late  client's  grandson,  Mr.  William 
Beauvoir,  the  only  child  of  Oliver  Beauvoir,  Esq.,  is 
now  in  the  States,  in  Chicago  or  Nebraska  or  some- 
where in  the  West.  We  shall  be  pleased  if  you  can 
keep  him  informed  as  to  the  progress  of  your  investi- 
gations. Our  Mr.  Dick  has  requested  Mr.  Oliver 
Beauvoir  to  give  his  son  your  address,  and  to  suggest 
his  calling  on  you  as  he  passes  through  New  York  on 
his  way  home.  T.  T.  &  D. 

JBocitment  $To.  17. 

Letter  from  Messrs.  Hitchcock  and  Van  Remselaer, 
New  York)  to  Messrs.  Pixley  and  Button,  Attorneys 
and  Counsellors  at  Law,  98  California  Street,  San 
Francisco,  California. 

Eafo  Offices  of  ^ttcfjcocft  &  Fan  l&ensselaer, 
76  33raa0foag,  |lefo  fforfc. 
P.  ©.33 01  4076. 

Jan.  22,  1879. 
Messrs.  PIXLEY  AND  SUTTON  : 

GENTLEMEN  :  We  have  just  received  from  our  Lon- 
don correspondents,  Messrs.  Throstlethwaite,  Throstle- 
thwaite, and  Dick,  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  London,  the  letter, 
a  copy  of  which  is  herewith  enclosed,  to  which  we 
invite  your  attention.  We  request  that  you  will  do 


26  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

all  in  your  power  to  aid  us  in  the  search  for  the  miss- 
ing Englishman.  From  the  letter  of  Messrs.  Throstle- 
thwaite,  Throstlethwaite,  and  Dick,  it  seems  extremely 
probable,  not  to  say  certain,  that  Mr.  Beauvoir  arrived 
in  your  city  about  1849,  in  company  with  a  distin- 
guished English  scientist,  Professor  Titus  Peebles, 
whose  professional  attainments  were  such  that  he  is 
probably  well  known,  if  not  in  California,  at  least  in 
some  other  of  the  mining  States.  The  first  thing  to 
be  done,  therefore,  it  seems  to  us,  is  to  ascertain  the 
whereabouts  of  the  professor,  and  to  interview  him  at 
once.  It  may  be  that  he  has  no  knowledge  of  the 
present  domicile  of  Mr.  William  Beauvoir,  in  which 
case  we  shall  rely  on  you  to  take  such  steps  as,  in  your 
judgment,  will  best  conduce  to  a  satisfactoiy  solution 
of  the  mystery.  In  any  event,  please  look  up  Profes- 
sor Peebles,  and  interview  him  at  once. 

Pray  keep  us  fully  informed  by  telegraph  of  your 
movements.  Yr  obt  serv'ts, 

HITCHCOCK  &  VAN  RENSSELAER. 

$B0mmmt  "No.  18. 

Telegram  from  Messrs.  Pixley  and  Button,  Attorneys 
and  Counsellors  at  Law,  98  California  Street,  San 
Francisco,  California,  to  Messrs.  Hitchcock  and 
Van  Rensselaer,  Attorneys  and  Counsellors  at  Law, 
76  Broadway,  New  York. 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  CAL.,  Jan.  30. 

Tite  Peebles  well  known  frisco  not  professor  keeps 
faro  bank.          PIXLEY  &  SUTTON.         (D.  H.  919.) 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  27 

IBocwnent  Ko.  19. 

Telegram  from  Messrs.  Hitchcock  and  Van  Eensse- 
laer  to  Messrs.  Pixley  and  Button,-  in  answer  to  the 

preceding. 

NEW  YORK,  Jan.  30. 

Must  be  mistake  Titus  Peebles  distinguished  scientist. 
HITCHCOCK  &  VAN  RENSSELAEK. 
(Free.    Answer  to  D.  H.) 

IBocument  No.  20. 

Telegram  from  Messrs.  Pixley  and  Sutton  to  Messrs. 
Hitchcock  and  Van  Rensselaer,  in  reply  to  the  pre- 
ceding. 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  CAL.,  Jan.  30. 

No  mistake  distinguished  faro  banker  suspected  skin 
game  shall  we  interview. 

PIXLEY  &  STJTTON.        (D.  H.  919.) 

document  "No.  21. 

Telegram  from  Messrs.  Hitchcock  and  Van  Rensselaer 
to  Messrs.  Pixley  and  Button,  in  reply  to  the  preceding. 

NEW  YORK,  Jan.  30. 
Must  be  mistake  interview  anyway. 

HITCHCOCK  &  VAN  RENSSELAER. 
(Free.     Answer  to  D.  H.) 

Jiocummt  W0.  22. 

Telegram  from  Messrs.  Pixley  &  Sutton  to  Messrs. 
Hitchcock  and  Van  JRensselaer,  in  reply  to  the  pre- 
ceding. 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  CAL.,  Jan.  30. 
Peebles  out  of  town  have  written  him. 

PIXLEY  &  SUTTON.         (D.  H.  919.) 


28  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

JBocutntnt  No.  23. 

Letter  from  Tite  W.  Peebles,  delegate  to  the  California 
Constitutional  Convention,  /Sacramento,  to  Messrs. 
Pixley  and  Sutton,  98  California  Street,  San  Fran- 
cisco, California. 

SACRAMENTO,  Feb.  2,  '79. 
Messrs.  PIXLEY  &  SUTTON  : 

San  Francisco. 

GENTLEMEN  :  Your  favor  of  the  31st  ult.,  forwarded 
me  from  San  Francisco,  has  been  duly  rec'd,  and  con- 
tents thereof  noted. 

My  time  is  at  present  so  fully  occupied  by  my  duties 
as  a  delegate  to  the  Constitutional  Convention  that  I 
can  only  jot  down  a  brief  report  of  my  recollections  on 
this  head.  When  I  return  to  S.  F.,  I  shall  be  happy 
to  give  you  any  further  information  that  may  be  in  my 
possession. 

The  person  concerning  whom  you  inquire  was  my 
fellow  passenger  on  my  first  voyage  to  this  State  on 
board  the  Mercy  G.  Tarbox,  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
year.  He  was  then  known  as  Mr.  William  Beauvoir. 
I  was  acquainted  with  his  history,  of  which  the  details 
escape  me  at  this  writing.  He  was  a  countryman  of 
mine;  a  member  of  an  important  county  family  — 
Devonian,  I  believe  —  and  had  left  England  on  account 
of  large  gambling  debts,  of  which  he  confided  to  me  the 
exact  figure.  I  believe  they  totted  up  something  like 
£14,500. 

I  had  at  no  time  a  very  intimate  acquaintance  with 
Mr.  Beauvoir ;  during  our  sojourn  on  the  Tarbox  he 
was  the  chosen  associate  of  a  depraved  and  vicious 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  29 

character  named  Phoenix.  I  am  not  averse  from  saying 
that  I  was  then  a  member  of  a  profession  rather  differ- 
ent to  my  present  one,  being,  in  fact,  professor  of 
metallurgy,  and  I  saw  much  less,  at  that  period,  of  Mr. 
B.  than  I  probably  should  now. 

Directly  we  landed  at  S.  F.,  the  object  of  your 
inquiries  set  out  for  the  gold  region,  without  adequate 
preparation,  like  so  many  others  did  at  that  time,  and, 
I  heard,  fared  very  ill. 

I  encountered  him  some  six  months  later;  I  have 
forgotten  precisely  in  what  locality,  though  I  have  a 
faint  impression  that  his  then  habitat  was  some  canon 
or  ravine  deriving  its  name  from  certain  osseous 
deposits.  Here  he  had  engaged  in  the  business  of 
gold-mining,  without,  perhaps,  sufficient  grounds  for 
any  confident  hope  of  ultimate  success.  I  have  his 
I.  O.  U.  for  the  amount  of  my  fee  for  assaying  several 
specimens  from  his  claim,  said  specimens  being  all  iron 
pyrites. 

This  is  all  I  am  able  to  call  to  mind  at  present  in  the 
matter  of  Mr.  Beauvoir.  I  trust  his  subsequent  career 
was  of  a  nature  better  calculated  to  be  satisfactory  to 
himself;  but  his  mineralogical  knowledge  was  but 
superficial ;  and  his  character  was  sadly  deformed  by 
a  fatal  taste  for  low  associates. 

I  remain,  gentlemen,  your  very  humble  and  obd't 
servant,  TITUS  W.  PEEBLES. 

P.  S.  — Private. 

MY  DEAE  Pix :  If  you  don't  feel  inclined  to  pony 
up  that  little  sum  you  are  out  on  the  bay  gelding,  drop 


30  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

down  to  my  place  when  I  get  back  and  I  '11  give  you 
another  chance  for  your  life  at  the  pasteboards.  Con- 
stitution going  through. 

Yours,  TITE. 


PART   FOURTH. 

IBonmunt  "No.  24. 

Extract  from  the  New  Centreville  [late  Dead  Horse"] 
"  Gazette  and  Courier  of  Civilization"  December 
20th,  1878: 

"Miss  Nina  Saville  appeared  last  night  at  the  Mendocino 
Grand  Opera  House,  in  her  unrivalled  specialty  of  Winona,  the 
Child  of  the  Prairies  ;  supported  by  Toinpkins  and  Frobisher's 
Grand  Stellar  Constellation.  Although  Miss  Saville  has  long 
been  known  as  one  of  the  most  promising  of  California's  younger 
tragediennes,  we  feel  safe  in  saying  that  the  impression  she  pro- 
duced upon  the  large  and  cultured  audience  gathered  to  greet 
her  last  night  stamped  her  as  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  phe- 
nomenal geniuses  of  our  own  or  other  times.  Her  marvellous 
beauty  of  form  and  feature,  added  to  her  wonderful  artistic 
power,  and  her  perfect  mastery  of  the  difficult  science  of  clog- 
dancing,  won  her  an  immediate  place  in  the  hearts  of  our  citi- 
zens, and  confirmed  the  belief  that  California  need  no  longer 
look  to  Europe  or  Chicago  for  dramatic  talent  of  the  highest 
order.  The  sylph-like  beauty,  the  harmonious  and  ever-varying 
grace,  the  vivacity  and  the  power  of  the  young  artist  who  made 
her  maiden  effort  among  us  last  night,  prove  conclusively  that 
the  virgin  soil  of  California  teems  with  yet  undiscovered  fires  of 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  31 

genius.  The  drama  of  Winona,  the  Child  of  the  Prairies,  is  a 
pure,  refined,  and  thoroughly  absorbing  entertainment,  and  has 
been  pronounced  by  the  entire  press  of  the  country  equal  to  if 
not  superior  to  the  fascinating  Lady  of  Lyons.  It  introduces 
all  the  favorites  of  the  company  in  new  and  original  characters, 
and  with  its  original  music,  which  is  a  prominent  feature,  has 
already  received  over  200  representations  in  the  principal  cities 
in  the  country.  It  abounds  in  effective  situations,  striking  tab- 
leaux, and  a  most  quaint  and  original  concert  entitled  *  The 
Mule  Fling,'  which  alone  is  worth  the  price  of  admission.  As 
this  is  the  first  presentation  in  this  city,  the  theatre  will  no 
doubt  be  crowded,  and  seats  should  be  secured  early  in  the  day. 
The  drama  will  be  preceded  by  that  prince  of  humorists,  Mr. 
Billy  Barker,  in  his  humorous  sketches  and  pictures  from  life." 

We  quote  the  above  from  our  esteemed  contempo- 
rary, the  Mendocino  Gazette,  at  the  request  of  Mr.  Zeke 
Kilburn,  Miss  Saville's  advance  agent,  who  has  still 
further  appealed  to  us,  not  only  on  the  ground  of  our 
common  humanity,  but  as  the  only  appreciative  and 
thoroughly  informed  critics  on  the  Pacific  Slope  to 
"endorse"  this  rather  vivid  expression  of  opinion. 
Nothing  will  give  us  greater  pleasure.  Allowing  for 
the  habitual  enthusiasm  of  our  northern  neighbor,  and 
for  the  well-known  chaste  aridity  of  Mendocino  in 
respect  of  female  beauty,  we  have  no  doubt  that  Miss 
Nina  Saville  is  all  that  the  fancy,  peculiarly  opulent 
and  active  even  for  an  advance  agent,  of  Mr.  .Kilburn 
has  painted  her,  and  is  quite  such  a  vision  of  youth, 
beauty,  and  artistic  phenomenality  as  will  make  the 
stars  of  Paris  and  Illinois  pale  their  ineffectual  fires. 

Miss  Saville  will  appear  in  her  "unrivalled  specialty" 
at  Hank's  New  Centreville  Opera  House,  to-morrow 


32  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

night,  as  may  be  gathered,  in  a  general  way,  from  an 
advertisement  in  another  column. 

We  should  not  omit  to  mention  that  Mr.  Zeke  Kil- 
burn,  Miss  Saville's  advance  agent,  is  a  gentleman  of 
imposing  presence,  elegant  manners,  and  complete 
knowledge  of  his  business.  This  information  may  be 
relied  upon  as  at  least  authentic,  having  been  derived 
from  Mr.  Kilburn  himself,  to  which  we  can  add,  as  our 
own  contribution,  the  statement  that  Mr.  Kilburn  is  a 
gentleman  of  marked  liberality  in  his  ideas  of  spirit- 
uous refreshments,  and  of  equal  originality  in  his  con- 
ception of  the  uses,  objects  and  personal  susceptibilities 
of  the  journalistic  profession. 


JBocumtnt  No.  25, 

Local  item  from  the  "New  Centreville  Standard" 

December  20th,  1878: 

Hon.  William  Beauvoir  has  registered  at  the  United 
States  Hotel.  Mr.  Beauvoir  is  a  young  English  gentle- 
man of  great  wealth,  now  engaged  in  investigating  the 
gigantic  resources  of  this  great  country.  We  welcome 
him  to  New  Centreville. 


JBocumcnt  No.  26. 

Programme  of  the  performance  given  in  the  Centre- 
mlle Theatre,  Dec.  21st,  1878: 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.      33 

HANKS'  NEW  GENTREVILLE  OPERA  HOUSE. 

A.  JACKSON  HANKS Sole  Proprietor  and  Manager. 

FIRST    APPEARANCE   IN   THIS   CITY  OP 

TOMPKINS  &  FROBISHER'S 
GRAND    STELLAR   CONSTELLATION, 

Supporting  California's  favorite  daughter,  the  young  American 
Tragedienne, 

3UCISS     3STI3ST-A.     SEVILLE, 

Who  will  appear  in  Her  "Unrivalled  Specialty, 

"WINOHA,  THE  CHILD  OF  THE  FEMEEE." 

THIS    ETVTENXN-G-,     JDECEIMLBER     31st,     1878, 

Will  be  presented,  with  the  following  phenomenal  cast,  the  accepted 
American  Drama, 

WINONA,  THE  CHILD  OF  THE  PRAIRIE. 

•WHSTO3STA.  1 

Miss  FLORA   MACMADISON I 

BIDDY   FLAHERTY MlSS  NINA 

OLD  AUNT  DINAH  (with  Song:,  "  Don't  Get  Weary  ") !• 

SALLY   HOSKINS  (with  the  old-time  melody,  "  Bobbin'  Around  ") SAVILLE. 

POOR  JOE  (with  Sons) 

FRAULINE  UNA  BOOBENSTEIN  (with  stammering  Song,  "  I  yoost  landet")  J 

SIR    EDMOND    BENNETT  (specially  engaged) E.  C.  GRAINGER 

WALTON  TRAVEKS G.  W.  PARSONS 

GIPSY  JOE M.  ISAACS 

'ANNABLE   'ORACE   'IGGINS BILLY  BARKER. 

TOMMY  TIPPER MISS  MAMIE  SMITH 

PETE,  the  Man  on  the  Dock SI    HANCOCK 

MRS.  MALONE,  the  Old  Woman  in  the  Little  House MRS.  K.  Y.  BOOTH 

HOBERT  BENNETT  (aged  5) LITTLE  ANNIE  WATSON 

Act  I.-  The  Old  Home.  Act  II.  —Alone  in  the  World. 

Act  III.— The  Frozen  Gulf: 

TUB   GKREAT  lOEZBEIRCa-  SE3STSA.TIOlSr. 
Act  IV.— Wedding  Bells. 

"WINONA,  THE  CHILD  OF  THE  PRAIRIE,"  WILL  BE  PRECEDED  BY 

A  FAVORITE  FARCE, 

In  which  the  great  BILLY  BARKER  will  appear  in  one  of  his  most  out- 
rageously funny  bits. 

NEW    SCENERY by Q.    Z.    SLOCUM 

Music  by  Professor  Kiddoo's  Silver  Bugle  Brass  Band  and 
Philharmonic  Orchestra. 

Chickway's  Grand  Piano,  lent  by  Schmidt,  2  Opera  House  Block. 

AFTER   THE    SHOW  GO   TO   HANKS'  AND   SEE  A  MAN  ! 

Pop  Williams,  the  only  legitimate  Bill-Poster  in  New  Centreville. 

(New  Centreville  Standard  Print.) 


34  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

IBocutnmt  "No.  27. 

HJxtract  from  the  New  Centreville  [late  Dead  Horse"] 
"Gazette  and  Courier  of  Civilization"  Dec.  24t^ 
1878. 

A  little  while  ago,  in  noting  the  arrival  of  Miss  Nina 
Saville  of  the  New  Centreville  Opera  House,  we  quoted 
rather  extensively  from  our  esteemed  contemporary, 
the  Mendocino  Times,  and  commented  upon  the  quo- 
tation. Shortly  afterwards,  it  may  also  be  remem- 
bered, we  made  a  very  direct  and  decided  apology  for 
the  sceptical  levity  which  inspired  those  remarks,  and 
expressed  our  hearty  sympathy  with  the  honest,  if 
somewhat  effusive,  enthusiasm  with  which  the  dramatic 
critic  of  Mendocino  greeted  the  sweet  and  dainty  little 
girl  who  threw  over  the  dull,  weary  old  business  of  the 
stage  "  sensation "  the  charm  of  a  fresh  and  childlike 
beauty  and  originality,  as  rare  and  delicate  as  those 
strange,  unreasonable  little  glimmers  of  spring  sunsets 
that  now  and  then  light  up  for  a  brief  moment  the 
dull  skies  of  winter  evenings,  and  seem  to  have 
strayed  into  ungrateful  January  out  of  sheer  pity  for 
the  sad  earth. 

Mendocino  noticed  the  facts  that  form  the  basis  of 
the  above  meteorological  simile,  and  we  believe  we 
gave  Mendocino  full  credit  for  it  at  the  time.  WC 
refer  to  the  matter  at  this  date  only  because  in  OIL 
remarks  of  a  few  days  ago  we  had  occasion  to  mention 
the  fact  of  the  existence  of  Mr.  Zeke  Kilburn,  an  ad- 
vance agent,  who  called  upon  us  at  the  time,  to  endeavor 
to  induce  us,  by  means  apparently  calculated  more 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  35 

closely  for  the  latitude  of  Mendocino,  to  extend  to 
Miss  Saville,  before"  her  appearance,  the  critical  appro- 
bation which  we  gladly  extended  after.  This  little 
item  of  interest  we  alluded  to  at  the  time,  and  further- 
more intimated,  with  some  vagueness,  that  there  existed 
in  Mr.  Kilburn's  character  a  certain  misdirected  zeal 
which,  combined  with  a  too  keen  artistic  appreciation, 
are  apt  to  be  rather  dangerous  stock-in-trade  for  an 
advance  agent. 

It  was  twenty-seven  minutes  past  two  o'clock  yes- 
terday afternoon.  The  chaste  white  mystery  of  Shigo 
Mountain  was  already  taking  on  a  faint,  almost  imper- 
ceptible hint  of  pink,  like  the  warm  cheek  of  a  girl 
who  hears  a  voice  and  anticipates  a  blush.  Yet  the 
rays  of  the  afternoon  sun  rested  with  undiminished 
radiance  on  the  empty  pork-barrel  in  front  of  McMul- 
lin's  shebang.  A  small  and  vagrant  infant,  whose 
associations  with  empty  barrels  were  doubtless  hitherto 
connected  solely  with  dreams  of  saccharine  dissipation, 
approached  the  bunghole  with  precocious  caution,  and 
retired  with  celerity  and  a  certain  acquisition  of  experi- 
ence. An  unattached  goat,  a  martyr  to  the  radical 
theory  of  personal  investigation,  followed  in  the  foot- 
steps of  infantile  humanity,  retired  with  even  greater 
promptitude,  and  was  fain  to  stay  its  stomach  on  a 
presumably  empty  rend-rock  can,  afterward  going  into 
seclusion  behind  McMullin's  horse-shed,  before  the 
diuretic  effect  of  tin  flavored  with  blasting-powder 
could  be  observed  by  the  attentive  eye  of  science. 

Mr.  Kilburn  emerged  from  the  hostelry  of  McMullin. 
Mr.  Kilburn,  as  we  have  before  stated  at  his  own 


36  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

request,  is  a  gentleman  of  imposing  presence.  It  is 
well  that  we  made  this  statement  when  we  did,  for  it 
is  hard  to  judge  of  the  imposing  quality  in  a  gentle- 
man's presence  when  that  gentleman  is  suspended 
from  the  arm  of  another  gentleman  by  the  collar  of 
the  first  gentleman's  coat.  The  gentleman  in  the  rear 
of  Mr.  Kilburn  was  Mr.  William  Beauvoir,  a  young 
Englishman  in  a  check  suit.  Mr.  Beauvoir  is  not  avow- 
edly a  man  of  imposing  presence ;  he  wears  a  seal  ring, 
and  he  is  generally  a  scion  of  an  effete  oligarchy,  but 
he  has,  since  his  introduction  into  this  community, 
behaved  himself,  to  use  the  adjectivial  adverb  of  Mr. 
McMullin,  white,  and  he  has  a  very  remarkable  biceps. 
These  qualities  may  hereafter  enhance  his  popularity 
in  New  Centreville. 

Mr.  Beauvoir's  movements,  at  twenty-seven  minutes 
past  two  yesterday  afternoon,  were  few  and  simple. 
He  doubled  Mr.  Kilburn  up,  after  the  fashion  of  an 
ordinary  jack-knife,  and  placed  him  in  the  barrel,  wedge- 
extremity  first,  remarking,  as  he  did  so,  "  She  is,  is 
she?"  He  then  rammed  Mr.  Kilburn  carefully  home, 
and  put  the  cover  on. 

We  learn  to-day  that  Mr.  Kilburn  has  resumed  his 
professional  duties  on  the  road. 

IBocutnntt  No.  28* 

Account  of  the  same  event  from  the  New  Centreville 
"  Standard,"  December  24th,  1878. 

It  seems  strange  that  even  the  holy  influences  which 
radiate  from,  this  joyous  season  cannot  keep  some  men 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  37 

from  getting  into  unseemly  wrangles.  It  was  only 
yesterday  that  our  local  saw  a  street  row  here  in  the 
quiet  avenues  of  our  peaceful  city  —  a  street  row 
recalling  the  riotous  scenes  which  took  place  here 
before  Dead  Horse  experienced  a  change  of  heart  and 
became  New  Centreville.  Our  local  succeeded  in  gath- 
ering all  the  particulars  of  the  affray,  and  the  following 
statement  is  reliable.  It  seems  that  Mr.  Kilburn,  the 
gentlemanly  and  affable  advance  agent  of  the  Nina 
Saville  Dramatic  Company,  now  performing  at  Andy 
Hanks'  Opera  House  to  big  houses,  was  brutally  as- 
saulted by  a  ruffianly  young  Englishman,  named  Beau- 
voir,  for  no  cause  whatever.  We  say  for.no  cause,  as 
it  is  obvious  that  Mr.  Kilburn,  as  the  agent  of  the 
troupe,  could  have  said  nothing  against  Miss  Saville 
which  an  outsider,  not  to  say  a  foreigner  like  Mr. 
Beauvoir,  had  any  call  to  resent.  Mr.  Kilburn  is  a 
gentleman  unaccustomed  to  rough-and-tumble  encoun- 
ters, while  his  adversary  has  doubtless  associated  more 
with  pugilists  than  gentlemen  —  at  least  anyone  would 
think  so  from  his  actions  yesterday.  Beauvoir  hustled 
Mr.  Kilburn  out  of  Mr.  Mullin's,  where  the  unprovoked 
assault  began,  and  violently  shook  him  across  the  new 
plank  sidewalk.  The  person  by  the  name  of  Clark, 
whom  Judge  Jones  for  some  reason  now  permits  to 
edit  the  moribund  but  once  respectable  Gazette,  caught 
the  eye  of  the  congenial  Beauvoir,  and,  true  to  the 
ungentlemanly  instincts  of  his  base  nature,  pointed  to 
a  barrel  in  the  street.  The  brutal  Englishman  took  the 
hint  and  thrust  Mr.  Kilburn  forcibly  into  the  barrel, 
leaving  the  vicinity  before  Mr.  Kilburn,  emerging  from 


38  TEE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

his  close  quarters,  had  fully  recovered.  "What  the  ruf- 
fianly Beauvoir's  motive  may  have  been  for  this  wanton 
assault  it  is  impossible  to  say ;  but  it  is  obvious  to  all 
why  this  fellow  Clark  sought  to  injure  Mr.  Kilburn,  a 
gentleman  whose  many  good  qualities  he  of  course  fails 
to  appreciate.  Mr.  Kilburn,  recognizing  the  acknowl- 
edged merits  of  our  job-office,  had  given  us  the  contract 
for  all  the  printing  he  needed  in  New  Centreville. 

document  No.  29. 

Advertisement  from  the  New   York  "  Clipper"  Dec. 
21st,  1878. 

WINSTON  &  MACK'S 

GRAND  INTERNATIONAL 

MEGATHERIUM  VARIETY  COMBINATION, 

COMPANY    CALL. 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Company  will  assemble  for  rehearsal,  at 
Emerson's  Opera  House,  San  Francisco,  on  Wednesday,  Dec.  27th,  at  12 
M.8harP.  BaUdatl..  fe&Hf^K, }  Managers. 

Emerson's  Opera  House, 

San  Francisco,  Dec.  10th,  1878. 

Protean  Artist  wanted.    Would  like  to  hear  from  Nina  Saville. 
12  — It*. 


JBocumntt  No.  30. 
Letter  from  Nina  Saville  to  William  Beauvoir. 

NEW  CENTREVJLLE,  December  26,  1878. 
MY  DEAE  ME.  BEAUVOIE — I  was  very  sorry  to  re- 
ceive your  letter  of  yesterday  —  very  sorry  —  because 
there  can  be  only  one  answer  that  I  can  make  —  and 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  39 

you  might  well  have  spared  me  the  pain  of  saying  the 
word  —  No.  You  ask  me  if  I  love  you.  If  I  did  — 
do  you  think  it  would  be  true  love  in  me  to  tell  you  so, 
when  I  know  what  it  would  cost  you?  Oh  indeed  you 
must  never  marry  me!  In  your  own  country  you  would 
never  have  heard  of  me — never  seen  me — surely  never 
written  me  such  a  letter  to  tell  me  that  you  love  me 
and  want  to  marry  me.  It  is  not  that  I  am  ashamed 
of  my  business  or  of  the  folks  around  me,  or  ashamed 
that  I  am  only  the  charity  child  of  two  poor  play- 
ers, who  lived  and  died  working  for  the  bread  for 
their  mouths  and  mine.  I  am  proud  of  them  —  yes, 
proud  of  what  they,  did  and  suffered  for  one  poorer 
than  themselves  —  a  little  foundling  out  of  an  Indian 
camp.  But  I  know  the  difference  between  you  and 
me.  You  are  a  great  man  at  home  —  you  have  never 
told  me  how  great  —  but  I  know  your  father  is  a  rich 
lord,  and  I  suppose  you  are.  It  is  not  that  I  think  you 
care  for  that,  or  think  less  of  me  because  I  was  born 
different  from  you.  I  know  how  good  —  how  kind  — 
how  respectful  you  have  always  been  to  me  —  my  lord 
—  and  I  shall  never  forget  it  —  for  a  girl  in  my  posi- 
tion knows  well  enough  how  you  might  have  been 
otherwise.  Oh  believe  me  —  my  true  friend  —  I  am 
never  going  to  forget  all  you  have  done  for  me  —  and 
how  good  it  has  been  to  have  you  near  me  —  a  man  so 
different  from  most  others  —  I  don't  mean  only  the 
kind  things  you  have  done — the  books  and  the  thoughts 
and  the  ways  you  have  taught  me  to  enjoy  —  and  all 
the  trouble  you  have  taken  to,  make  me  something  bet- 
ter than  the  stupid  little  girl  I  was  when  you  found  me 


40  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

—  but  a  great  deal  more  than  that  —  the  consideration 
you  have  had  for  me  and  for  what  I  hold  best  in  the 
world.      I  had  never  met  a  gentleman  before  —  and 
now  the  first  one  I  meet  —  he  is  my  friend.     That  is  a 
great  deal. 

Only  think  of  it!  You  have  been  following  me 
around  now  for  three  months,  and  I  have  been  weak 
enough  to  allow  it.  I  am  going  to  do  the  right  thing 
now.  You  may  think  it  hard  in  me  if  you  really  mean 
what  you  say,  but  even  if  everything  else  were  right,  I 
would  not  marry  you  —  because  -of  your  rank.  I  do 
not  know  how  things  are  at  your  home  —  but  some- 
thing tells  me  it  would  be  wrong  and  that  your  family 
would  have  a  right  to  hate  you  and  never  forgive  you. 
Professionals  cannot  go  in  your  society.  And  that  is 
even  if  I  loved  you  —  and  I  do  not  love  you  —  I  do 
not  love  you  —  I  do  not  love  you  —  now  I  have  written 
it  you  will  believe  it. 

So  now  it  is  ended- — I  am  going  back  to  the  line 
I  was  first  in  —  variety — and  with  a  new  name.  So 
you  can  never  find  me  —  I  entreat  you  —  I  beg  of  you 

—  not  to  look  for  me.     If  you  only  put  your  mind  to 
it  —  you  will  find  it  so  easy  to  forget  me  —  for  I  will 
not  do  you  the  wrong  to  think  that  you  did  not  mean 
what  you  wrote  in  your  letter  or  what  you  said  that 
night  when  we  sang  Annie  Laurie  together  the  last 
time.  Your  sincere  friend, 

NINA. 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  41 

Documents  "Nas.  31  ano  32, 

Items  from  San  Francisco  "Figaro "  of  December 
29th,  1878: 

Nina  Saville  Co.  disbanded  New  Centreville  26th. 
No  particulars  received. 

Winston  &  Mack's  Comb,  takes  the  road  December 
31st,  opening  at  Tuolumne  Hollow.  Manager  Winston 
announces  the  engagement  of  Anna  Laurie,  the  Protean 
change  artiste,  with  songs,  "  Don't  Get  Weary,"  "  Bob- 
bin' Around,"  "I  Yoost  Landet." 

Document  No.  33. 

Telegram  from  Zeke  Kilburn,  New  Centreville,  to 
Winston  and  Mack,  Emersorfs  Opera  House,  San 
Francisco,  Cal. 

NEW  CENTREVILLE,  Dec.  28,  1878. 
Have  you  vacancy  for  active  and  energetic  advance 
agent.  Z.  KILBURN. 

(9  words  30  paid.) 

liocummt  No.  34. 

Telegram  from  Winston  and  Mack,  San  Francisco, 
to  Zeke  EJilburn,  New  Centreville : 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  Dec.  28, 1878. 
No. 

WINSTON  &  MACK. 
(Collect  30  cents.) 


42  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

Document  "No.  35. 

Sill  sent  to  William  JSeauvoir,  United  States  Hotel, 
Tiiolumne  Hollow,  Gal.: 

Tiiolumne  Hollow,  CaL,  Dec.  29,  1878. 

William  Beauvoir,  Esq. 

Bought  of   HIMMEL   &   HATCH, 

Opera  House  Block, 

JEWELLERS  &  DIAMOND  MERCHANTS, 

Dealers  in  all  kinds  of  Fancy  Goods,  Stationery,  and  Umbrellas,  Watches, 
Clocks  and  Barometers. 

TERMS  CASH.  MUSICAL  BOXES  REPAIRED. 

Dec.  29,  One  diamond  and  enamelled  locket $75.00 

One  gold  chain      48.00 

$123.00 
JRec'd  Payt. 

Himmel  &  Hatch, 

per  S. 


PART    FIFTH. 

Document  "No.  36. 

Letter  from  Cable  J.  Dexter,  Esq.,  to  Messrs.  Pixley 
and  Sutton,  San  Francisco. 

NEW  CENTRE  VILLE,  CAL.,  March  3,  1879. 
Messrs.  PIXLEY  &  SUTTON  : 

GENTS:  I  am  happy  to  report  that  I  have  at  last 
reached  the  bottom  level  in  the  case  of  William  Beaver, 
alias  Beaver  Bill,  deceased  through  Indians  in  1861. 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  43 

In  accordance  with  your  instructions  and  check,  I 
proceeded,  on  the  10th  ult.,  to  Shawgum  Creek,  when 
I  interviewed  Blue  Horse,  chief  of  the  Comanches,  who 
tomahawked  subject  of  your  inquiries  in  the  year  above 
mentioned.  Found  the  Horse  in  the  penitentiary, 
serving  out  a  drunk  and  disorderly.  Though4belliger- 
ent  at  date  aforesaid,  Horse  is  now  tame,  though  in- 
temperate. Appeared  unwilling  to  converse,  and  re- 
quired stimulants  to  awaken  his  memory.  Please  find 
enclosed  memo,  of  account  for  whiskey,  covering  extra 
demijohn  to  corrupt  jailer.  Horse  finally  stated  that 
he  personally  let  daylight  through  deceased,  and  is 
willing  to  guarantee  thoroughness  of  decease.  Stated 
further  that  aforesaid  Beaver's  family  consisted  of 
squaw  and  kid.  Is  willing  to  swear  that  squaw  was 
killed,  the  tribe  having  no  use  for  her.  Killing  done 
by  Mule-Who-Goes-Crooked,  personal  friend  of  Horse's. 
The  minor  child  was  taken  into  camp  and  kept  until 
December  of  1863,  when  tribe  dropped  to  howling  cold 
winter  and  went  on  government  reservation.  Infant 
(female)  was  then  turned  over  to  U.  S.  Government 
at  Fort  Kearney. 

I  posted  to  last-named  locality  on  the  18th  ult.,  and 
found  by  the  quartermaster's  books  that,  no  one  appear- 
ing to  claim  the  kid,  she  had  been  duly  indentured, 
together  with  six  Indians,  to  a  man  by  the  name  of 
Guardine  or  Sardine  (probably  the  latter),  in  the  show 
business.  The  Indians  were  invoiced  as  Sage  Brush 
Jimmy,  Boiling  Hurricane,  Mule-Who-Goes-Crooked, 
Joe,  Hairy  Grasshopper  and  Dead  Polecat.  Child 
known  as  White  Kitten.  Receipt  for  Indians  was 


44  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

signed  by  Mr.  Hi.  Samuels,  who  is  still  in  the  circus 
business,  and  whom  I  happen  to  be  selling  o"ut  at  this 
moment,  at  suit  of  JVIcCullum  &  Montmorency,  former 
partners.  Samuels  positively  identified  kid  with  va- 
riety specialist  by  name  of  Nina  Saville,  who  has  been 
showing  all  through  this  region  for  a  year  past. 

I  shall  soon  have  the  pleasure  of  laying  before  you 
documents  to  establish  the  complete  chain  of  evidence, 
from  knifing  of  original  subject  of  your  inquiries  right 
up  to  date. 

I  have  to-day  returned  from  New  Centreville,  whither 
I  went  after  Miss  Saville.  Found  she  had  just  skipped 
the  town  with  a  young  Englishman  by  the  name  of 
Bovoir,  who  had  been  paying  her  polite  attentions  for 
some  time,  having  bowied  or  otherwise  squelched  a  man 
for  her  within  a  week  or  two.  It  appears  the  young 
woman  had  refused  to  have  anything  to  do  with  him 
for  a  long  period;  but  he  seems  to  have  struck  pay 
gravel  about  two  days  before  my -arrival.  At  present, 
therefore,  the  trail  is  temporarily  lost;  but  I  expect 
to  fetch  the  couple  if  they  are  anywhere  this  side  of 
the  Rockies. 

Awaiting  your  further  instructions,  and  cash  backing 
thereto,  I  am,  gents,  very  resp'y  yours, 

CABLE  J.  DEXTER. 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  45 

Document  Ho.  37. 

Envelope  of  letter  from  Sir  Oliver  Beauvoir,  Bart.) 
to  Ids  son,  William  Beauvoir. 


Sent  to  Dead  Letter  Office 


Mr.  William  Beauvoir 

Sherman  House  Hotel 
Not  here  Chicago 

try  Brevoort  House 

N.  Y.  United  States  of  America 


JBocttmmt  No  38, 
Letter  contained  in  the  envelope  above. 

CHELSWOBTH  COTTAGE,  March  30,  1879. 
MY  DEAR  BOY  :  In  the  sudden  blow  which  has  come 
upon  us  all  I  cannot  find  words  to  write.  J"ou  do  not 
know  what  you  have  done.  Your  uncle  William,  after 
whom  you  were  named,  died  in  America.  He  left  but 
one  child,  a  daughter,  the  only  grandchild  of  my  father 
except  you.  And  this  daughter  is  the  Miss  Nina 
Saville  with  whom  you  have  formed  so  unhappy  a  con- 
nection. She  is  your  own  cousin.  She  is  a  Beauvoir. 
She  is  of  our  blood,  as  good  as  any  in  England. 

My  feelings  are  overpowering.  I  am  choked  by  the 
suddenness  of  this  great  grief.  I  cannot  write  to  you 
as  I  would.  But  I  can  say  this :  Do  not  let  me  see  you 
or  hear  from  you  until  this  stain  be  taken  from  our  name. 

OLIVER  BEAUVOIR. 


46  THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE. 

"No.  39. 


Cable  dispatch  of  William  Beauvoir,  Windsor  Hotel, 
New  York,  to  Sir  Oliver  Beauvoir,  Bart.,  Chels- 
worth  Cottage,  Suffolk,  England. 

NEW  YORK,  May  1,  1879. 
Have  posted  you  Herald. 

WILLIAM  BEAUVOIK. 


Document  !tf0.  40. 

Advertisement  under  the  head  of  "  Marriages"  from 
the  New  York  "Herald,"  April  30th,  1879. 

BEAUVOIE  —  BEAUVOIK.  —  On  Wednesday,  Jan.  1st, 
1879,  at  Steal  Valley,  California,  by  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Twells,  William  Beauvoir,  only  son  of  Sir  Oliver 
Beauvoir,  of  Chelsworth  Cottage,  Surrey,  England, 
to  Nina,  only  child  of  the  late  William  Beauvoir,  of 
New  Centreville,  Cal. 

Bocmnent  "No.  41. 

Extract  from  the  New  York  "Herald"  of  May  29th, 
1879. 

Among  the  passengers  on  the  outgoing  Cunard 
steamer  Gallia,  which  left  New  York  on  Wednesday, 
was  the  Honorable  William  Beauvoir,  only  son  of  Sir 
Oliver  Beauvoir,  Bart.,  of  England.  Mr.  Beauvoir  has 
been  passing  his  honeymoon  in  this  city,  and,  with  his 
charming  bride,  a  famous  California  belle,  has  been  the 
recipient  of  many  cordial  courtesies  from  members  of 
our  best  society.  Mr.  William  Beauvoir  is  a  young 


THE  DOCUMENTS  IN  THE  CASE.  47 

man  of  great  promise  and  brilliant  attainments,  and  is 
a  highly  desirable  addition  to  the  large  and  constantly 
increasing  number  of  aristocratic  Britons  who  seek  for 
wives  among  the  lovely  daughters  of  Columbia.  We 
understand  that  the  bridal  pair  will  take  up  their  resi- 
dence with  the  groom's  father,  at  his  stately  country- 
seat,  Chelsworth  Manor,  Suffolk. 


VENETIAN    GLASS. 

BY  BKANDEK,  MATTHEWS. 


IN  THE  OLD  WORLD. 

had  been  to  the  Lido  for  a  short  swim  in 
-L  the  slight  but  bracing  surf  of  the  Adriatic.  They 
had  had  a  mid-day  breakfast  in  a  queer  little  restaurant, 
known  only  to  the  initiated,  and  therefore  early  dis- 
covered by  Larry,  who  had  a  keen  scent  for  a  cook 
learned  in  the  law.  They  had  loitered  along  the  Riva 
degli  Schiavoni,  looking  at  a  perambulatory  puppet- 
show,  before  which  a  delighted  audience  sturdily  dis- 
regarded the  sharp  wind  which  bravely  fluttered  the 
picturesque  tatters  of  the  spectators ;  and  they  were 
moved  to  congratulate  the  Venetians  on  their  freedom 
from  the  monotonous  repertory  of  the  Anglo-American 
Punch  and  Judy,  which  consists  solely  of  a  play  really 
unique  in  the  exact  sense  of  that  much-abused  word. 
They  were  getting  their  fill  of  the  delicious  Italian  art 
which  is  best  described  by  an -American  verb  —  to  loaf. 
And  yet  they  were  not  wont  to  be  idle,  and  they  had 
both  the  sharp,  quick  American  manner,  on  which  lazi- 
ness sits  uneasily  and  infrequently. 
48 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  49 

John  Manning  and  Laurence  Laughton  were  both 
young  New  Yorkers.  Larry  —  for  so  in  youth  was  he 
called  by  everybody  pending  the  arrival  of  years  which 
should  make  him  a  universal  uncle,  to  be  known  of  all 
men  as  "  Uncle  Larry  "  —  was  as  pleasant  a  travelling 
companion  as  one  could  wish.  He  was  the  only  son 
and  heir  of  a  father,  now  no  more,  but  vaguely  under- 
stood when  alive  and  in  the  flesh  to  have  been  "  in  the 
China  trade;"  although  whether  this  meant  crockery 
or  Cathay  no  one  was  able  with  precision  to  declare. 
Larry  Laughton  had  been  graduated  from  Columbia 
College  with  the  class  of  1860,  and  the  following  spring 
found  him  here  in  Venice  after  a  six  months'  ramble 
through  Europe  with  his  old  friend,  John  Manning, 
partly  on  foot  and  partly  in  an  old  carriage  of  their 
own,  in  which  they  enjoyed  the  fast-vanishing  pleasures 
of  posting. 

John  Manning  was  a  little  older  than  Larry;  he  had 
left  West  Point  in  1854  with  a  commission  as  second 
lieutenant  in  the  Old  Dragoons.  For  nearly  six  years 
he  did  hfo  duty  in  that  state  of  life  in  which  it  pleased 
the  Secretary  of  War  and'  General  Scott  to  call  him ; 
he  had  crossed  the  plains  one  bleak  winter  to  a  post  in 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  he  had  danced  through  two 
summers  at  Fort  Adams  at  Newport ;  he  had  been 
stationed  for  a  while  in  New  Mexico,  where  there  was 
an  abundance  of  the  pleasant  sport  of  Indian-fighting, 
—  even  now  he  had  only  to  make  believe  a  little  to  see 
the  tufted  head  of  a  Navajo  peer  around  the  columns 
supporting  the  Lion  of  Saint  Mark,  or  to  mistake  the 
fringe  oifacchini  on  the  edge  of  the  Grand  Canal  for 


50  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

a  group  of  the  shiftless  half-breeds  of  New  Mexico.  In 
time  the  Old  Dragoons  had  been  ordered  North,  where 
the  work  was  then  less  pleasant  than  on  the  border ; 
and,  in  fact,  it  was  a  distinct  unwillingness  to  execute 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  which  forced  John  Manning  to 
resign  his  commission  in  the  army,  although  it  was  the 
hanging  of  John  Brown  which  drew  from  him  the 
actual  letter  of  resignation.  Before  settling  down  to 
other  work  —  for  he  was  a  man  who  could  not  and 
would  not  be  idle  —  he  had  gratified  his  long  desire  of 
taking  a  turn  through  the  Old  World.  Larry  Laughton 
had  joined  him  in  Holland,  where  he  had  been  making 
researches  into  the  family  history,  and  proving  to  his 
own  satisfaction  at  least  that  the  New  York  Mannings, 
in  spite  of  their  English  name,  had  come  from  Amster- 
dam to  New  Amsterdam.  And  now,  toward  the  end 
of  April,  1861,  John  Manning  and  Laurence  Laughton 
stood  on  the  Rialto,  hesitating  Fra  Marco  e  Todaro, 
as  the  Venetians  have  it,  in  uninterested  question 
whether  they  should  go  into  the  Ghetto,  among  the 
hideous  homes  of  the  chosen  people,  or  out  again  to 
Murano  for  a  second  visit  to  the  famous  factory  of 
Venetian  glass. 

"  I  say,  John,"  remarked  Larry  as  they  lazily  debated 
the  question,  gazing  meanwhile  on  the  steady  succession 
of  gondolas  coming  and  going  to  and  from  the  steps  by 
the  side  of  the  bridge,  "  I  'd  as  lief,  if  not  liefer,  go  to 
Murano  again,  if  they  've  any  of  their  patent  anti-poison 
goblets  left.  You  know  they  say  they  used  to  make  a 
glass  so  fine  that  it  was  shattered  into  shivers  whenever 
poison  might  be  poured  into  it.  Of  course  I  don't  be- 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  51 

lieve  it,  but  a  glass  like  that  would  be  mighty  handy 
in  the  sample-rooms  of  New  York.  I'm  afraid  a  man 
walking  up  Broadway  could  use  up  a  gross  of  the  anti- 
poison goblets  before  he  got  one  straight  drink  of  the 
genuine  article,  unadulterated  and  drawn  from  the 
wood." 

"You  must  not  make  fun  of  a  poetic  legend,  Larry. 
You  have  to  believe  everything  over  here,  or  you  do 
not  get  the  worth  of  your  money,"  said  John  Manning. 

"  Well,  I  don't  know,"  was  Larry's  reply ;  "  I  don't 
know  just  what  to  believe.  I  was  talking  about  it  last 
night  at  Florian's,  while  you  were  writing  letters  home." 

"  I  did  not  know  Mr.  Laugh  ton  had  friends  in  Venice." 

"  Oh,  I  can  make  friends  anywhere.  And  this  one 
was  lots  of  fun.  He  was  a  priest,  an  ablate,  I  think  he 
calls  himself.  He  had  read  five  newspapers  in  the 
caffb  and  paid  for  one  tiny  cup  of  coffee.  When  I 
finished  the  Debats  I  passed  it  to  him  for  his  sixth  — 
and  he  spoke  to  me  in  French,  and  I  wasn't  going  to 
let  an  Italian  talk  French  to  me  without  answering 
back,  so  I  just  sailed  in  and  began  to  swap  stories  with 
him." 

"  No  doubt  you  gave  him  much  valuable  information." 

"  Well,  I  did ;  I  just  exuded  information.  Why  the 
first  thing  he  said,  when  I  told  him  I  was  an  American, 
was  to  wonder  whether  I  had  n't  met  his  brother,  who 
was  also  in  America  —  in  Rio  Janeiro  —  just  as  if  Rio 
was  the  other  side  of  the  North  River." 

John  Manning  smiled  at  Larry's  disgusted  expres- 
sion, and  asked,  "  What  has  this  abbate  to  do  with  the 
fragile  Venetian  glass  ?  " 


52  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

"  Only  this,"  answered  Larry.  "  I  told  him  two  or 
three  Northwesters,  just  as  well  as  I  could  in  French, 
and  then  he  said  that  marvellous  things  were  also  done 
here  once  upon  a  time.  And  he  told  me  about  the 
glass  which  broke  when  poison  was  poured  into  it." 

"It  is  a  pleasant  superstition,"  said  John  Manning. 
"  I  think  Poe  makes  use  of  it,  and  I  believe  Shake- 
speare refers  to  it." 

"But  did  either  Poe  or  Shakespeare  say  anything 
about  the  two  goblets  just  alike,  made  for  the  twin 
brothers  Manin  nearly  four  hundred  years  ago  ?  Did 
they  tell  you  how  one  glass  was  shivered  by  poison  and 
its  owner  killed,  and  how  the  other  brother  had  to  flee 
for  his  life  ?  Did  they  inform  you  that  the  unbroken 
goblet  exists  to  this  day,  and  is  in  fact  now  for  sale  by 
an  Hebrew  Jew  who  peddles  antiquities?  Did  they 
tell  you  that?" 

"  Neither  Edgar  Allan  Poe  nor  William  Shakespeare 
ever  disturbs  my  slumbers  by  telling  me  anything  of 
the  sort,"  laughed  Manning. 

"  Well,  my  abbate  told  me  just  that,  and  he  gave  me 
the  address  of  the  Shylock  who  has  the  surviving  goblet 
for  sale." 

"  Suppose  we  go  there  and  see  it,"  suggested  Man- 
ning, "  and  you  can  tell  me  the  whole  story  of  the  twin 
brothers  as  we  go  along." 

"Shall  we  take  a  gondola  or  walk?"  was  Larry's 
interrogative  acceptance  of  the  suggestion. 

"  It 's  in  the  Ghetto,  is  n't  it  ?" 

"Most  of  the  Jew  curiosity  dealers  have  left  the 
Ghetto.  Our  Shylock  has  a  palace  on  the  Grand  Canal. 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  53 

I  guess  we  had  better  take  a  gondola,  though  it  can't 
be  far." 

So  they  sat  themselves  down  in  one  of  the  aquatic 
cabs  which  ply  the  water  streets  of  the  city  in  the  sea. 
The  gondolier  stood  to  his  oar  and  put  his  best  foot 
foremost,  and  as  the  boat  sped  forward  on  its  way  along 
the  great  S  of  the  Grand  Canal,  Larry  told  the  tale  of 
the  twin  brothers  and  the  shattered  goblet. 

"  Well,  it  seems  that  some  time  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, say  three  hundred  years  ago  or  thereabout,  there 
were  several  branches  of  the  great  and  powerful  Manin 
family  —  the  same  family  to  which  the  patriotic  Daniele 
Manin  belonged,  you  know.  And  at  the  head  of  one 
of  these  branches  were  the  twin  brothers  Marco  Manin 
and  Giovanni  Manin.  Now,  these  brothers  were  de- 
voted to  each  other,  and  they  had  only  one  thought, 
one  word,  one  deed.  When  one  of  them  happened  to 
think  of  a  thing,  it  often  happened  that  the  other 
brother  did  it.  So  it  was  not  surprising  that  they  both 
fell  in  love  with  the  same  woman.  She  was  a  dan^er- 

o 

ous-looking,  yellow-haired  woman,  with  steel-gray  eyes 
—  that  is,  if  her  eyes  were  not  really  green,  as  to  which 
there  was  doubt.  But  there  was  no  doubt  at  all  that 
she  was  powerfully  handsome.  The  abbate  said  that 
there  was  a  famous  portrait  of  her  in  one  of  these 
churches  as  a  Saint  Mary  Magdalen,  with  her  hair 
down.  She  was  a  splendid  creature,  and  lots  of  men 
were  running  after  her  besides  the  twin  Manins.  The 
two  brothers  did  not  quarrel  with  each  other  about  the 
woman,  but  they  did  quarrel  with  some  of  her  other 
lovers,  and  particularly  with  a  nobleman  of  the  highest 


54  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

rank  and  power,  who  was  supposed  to  belong  not  only 
to  the  Council  of  Ten,  but  to  the  Three.  Between  this 
man  and  the  Manins  there  was  war  to  the  knife  and 
the  knife  to  the  hilt.  One  day  Marco  Manin  expressed 
a  wish  for  one  of  these  goblets  of  Venetian  glass  so  fine 
that  poison  shatters  it,  and  so  Giovanni  went  out  to 
Murano  and  ordered  two  of  them,  of  the  very  finest 
quality,  and  just  alike  in  every  particular  of  color  and 
shape  and  size.  You  see  the  twins  always  had  every- 
thing in  pairs.  But  the  people  at  Murano  somehow 
misunderstood  the  order,  and  although  they  made  both 
glasses  they  sent  home  only  one.  Marco  Manin  was  at 
table  when  it  arrived,  and  he  took  it  in  his  hand  at 
once,  and  after  admiring  its  exquisite  workmanship  — 
you  see,  all  these  old  Venetians  had  the  art-feeling 
strongly  developed  —  he  told  a  servant  to  fill  it  to  the 
brim  with  Cyprus  wine.  But  as  he  raised  the  flowing 
cup  to  his  lips  it  shivered  in  his  grasp  and  the  wine  was 
spilt  on  the  marble  floor.  He  drew  his  sword  and  slew 
the  servant  who  had  sought  to  betray  him,  and  rushing 
into  the  street  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with  the 
enemy  whom  he  knew  to  have  instigated  the  attempt. 
They  crossed  swords  at  once,  but,  before  Marco  Manin 
could  have  a  fair  fight  for  his  life,  he  was  stabbed  in  the 
back  by  a  glass  stiletto,  the  hilt  of  which  was  broken 
off  short  in  the  wound." 

"  Where  was  his  brother  all  this  time  ? "  was  the 
first  question  with  which  John  Manning  broke  the 
thread  of  his  friend's  story. 

"  He  had  been  to  see  the  yellow-haired  beauty,  and 
he  came  back  just  in  time  to  meet  his  brother's  lifeless 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  55 

body  as  it  was  carried  into  their  desolate  home.  Hold- 
ing his  dead  brother's  hand,  as  he  had  often  held  it  liv- 
ing, he  promised  his  brother  to  avenge  his  death  without 
delay  and  at  any  cost.  Then  he  prepared  at  once  for 
flight.  He  knew  that  Venice  would  be  too  hot  to  hold 
him  when  the  deed  was  done ;  and  besides,  he  felt 
that  without  his  brother  life  in  Venice  would  be  in- 
tolerable. So  he  made  ready  for  flight.  Twenty-four 
hours  to  a  minute  after  Marco  Manin's  death  the  body 
of  the  hireling  assassin  was  sinking  to  the  bottom  of 
the  Grand  Canal,  while  the  man  who  had  paid  for  the 
murder  lay  dead  on  the  same  spot  with  the  point  of  a 
glass  stiletto  in  his  heart !  And  when  they  wanted  to 
send  him  the  other  goblet,  there  was  no  one  to  send  it 
to  :  Giovanni  Manin  had  disappeared." 

"  Where  had  he  gone  ?  "  queried  John  Manning. 

"  That 's  what  I  asked  the  abbate,  and  he  said  he 
did  n't  know  for  sure,  but  that  in  those  days  Venice  had 
a  sizable  trade  with  the  Low  Countries,  and  there  was 
a  tradition  that  Giovanni  Manin  had  gone  to  the 
Netherlands." 

"  To  Holland?"  asked  John  Manning  with  unwonted 
interest. 

^Yes,  to  Amsterdam,  or  to  Rotterdam,  or  to  some 
one  of  those  -dam  towns,  as  we  used  to  call  them  in  our 
geography  class." 

"  It  was  to  Amsterdam,"  said  Manning,  speaking  as 
one  who  had  certain  information. 

"How  do  you  know  that?"  asked  Larry.  "Even 
the  abbate  said  it  was  only  a  tradition  that  he  had  gone 
to  Holland  at  all." 


56  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

"He  went  to  Amsterdam,"  said  Manning;  "that  I 
know." 

Before  Larry  could  ask  how  it  was  that  his  friend 
knew  anything  about  the  place  of  exile  of  a  man  whom 
he  had  never  heard  of  ten  minutes  earlier,  the  gondola 
had  paused  before  the  door  of  the  palace  in  which  dwelt 
the  dealer  in  antiquities  who  had  in  his  possession  the 
famous  goblet  of  Venetian  glass.  As  they  ascended  to 
the  sequence  of  rambling  rooms  cluttered  with  old 
furniture,  rusty  armor,  and  odds  and  ends  of  statuary, 
in  which  the  modern  Jew  of  Venice  sat  at  the  receipt 
of  custom,  both  Larry  Laughton  and  John  Manning 
had  to  give  their  undivided  attention  to  the  framing 
in  Italian  of  their  wishes.  Shylock  himself  was  a 
venerable  and  benevolent  person,  with  a  look  of  won- 
derful shrewdness  and  an  incomprehensibility  of  speech, 
for  he  spoke  the  Venetian  dialect  with  a  harsh  Jewish 
accent,  either  of  which  would  have  daunted  a  linguistic 
veteran.  Plainly  enough,  conversation  was  impossible, 
for  he  could  barely  understand  their  American-Italian, 
and  they  could  not  at  all  understand  his  Jewish-Vene- 
tian. But  it  would  not  do  to  let  these  Inglesi  go  away 
without  paying  tribute. 

tt  Cid ! "  said  Shylock,  smiling  graciously  at  his 
futile  attempts  to  open  communication  with  the 
enemy.  Then  he  called  Jessica  from  the  deep  win- 
dow where  she  had  been  at  work  on  the  quaint  old 
account-books  of  the  shop,  as  great  curiosities  as  any- 
thing in  it,  since  they  were  kept  in  Venetian,  but  by 
means  of  the  Hebrew  alphabet.  She  spoke  Italian, 
and  to  her  the  young  men  made  known  their  wants. 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  57 

She  said  a  few  words  to  her  father,  and  he  brought 
forth  the  goblet. 

It  was  a  marvellous  specimen  of  the  most  exquisite 
Venetian  workmanship.  A  pair  of  green  serpents, 
with  eyes  that  glowed  like  fire,  writhed  around  the 
golden  stem  of  a  blood-red  bowl,  and  as  the  white 
light  of  the  cloudless  sky  fell  on  it  from  the  broad 
window,  it  burned  in  the  glory  of  the  sunshine  and 
seemed  to  fill  itself  full  of  some  mysterious  and  royal 
wine.  Shylock  revolved  it  slowly  in  his  hand  to  show 
the  strange  waviness  of  its  texture,  and  as  it  turned, 
the  serpents  clung  more  closely  to  the  stem  and  arched 
their  heads  and  shot  a  glance  of  hate  at  the  strangers 
who  came  to  gaze  on  them  with  curious  fascination. 

John  Manning  looked  at  the  goblet  long  and  eagerly. 
"  How  did  it  come  into  your  possession  ?  "  he  asked. 

And  Jessica  translated  Shylock's  declaration  that 
the  goblet  had  been  at  Murano  for  hundreds  of  years ; 
it  was  anticho  —  antichissimo,  as  the  signor  could  see 
for  himself.  It  was  of  the  best  period  of  the  art. 
That  Shylock  would  guarantee.  How  came  it  into  his 
possession?  By  the  greatest  good  fortune.  It  was 
taken  from  Murano  during  the  troubles  after  the  fall 
of  the  Republic  in  the  time  of  Napoleon.  It  had 
gone  finally  into  the  hands  of  a  certain  count,  who, 
very  luckily,  was  poor.  Conte  che  non  conta,  non 
conta  niente.  So  Shylock  had  been  enabled  to  buy  it. 
It  had  been  the  desire  of  his  heart  for  years  to  own  so 
fine  an  object. 

"How  much  do  you  want  for  it?"  asked  John 
Manning. 


58  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

Shylock  scented  from  afar  the  battle  of  bargaining, 
dear  in  Italy  to  both  buyer  and  seller.  He  gave  a  keen 
look  at  both  the  Inglesi,  and  took  up  the  glass  affec- 
tionately, as  though  he  could  not  bear  to  part  with  it. 
Jessica  interpreted.  Shylock  had  intended  that  goblet 
for  his  own  private  collection,  but  the  frank  and  gen- 
erous manner  of  their  excellencies  had  overcome  him, 
and  he  would  let  them  have  it  for  five  hundred  florins. 

"  Five  hundred  florins !  Phew  ! "  whistled  Larry, 
astonished  in  spite  of  his  initiation  into  the  mysteries 
of  Italian  bargaining.  "  Well,  if  you  were  to  ask  me 
the  Shakespearian  conundrum,  Hath  not  a  Jew  eyes  ? 
I  should  n't  give  it  up ;  I  should  say  he  has  eyes  —  for 
the  main  chance." 

"  Five  hundred  florins,"  said  John  Manning.  "  Very 
well.  I '11  take  it." 

Shylock's  astonishment  at  getting  four  times  what 
he  would  have  taken  was  equalled  only  by  his  regret 
that  he  had  not  asked  twice  as  much. 

"  Can  you  pack  it  so  that  I  can  take  it  to  New  York 
safely?" 

"  Sicuro,  signor"  and  Shylock  agreed  to  have  the 
precious  object  boxed  with  all  possible  care  and  de- 
spatch, and  delivered  at  the  hotel  that  afternoon. 

"  Servo  suo  !  "  said  Jessica,  as  they  stood  at  the  door. 

"  Bon  di,  Patron !  "  responded  Larry,  in  Venetian 
fashion ;  then  as  the  door  closed  behind  them  he  said 
to  John  Manning,  "  Seems  to  me  you  were  in  a  hurry ! 
You  could  have  had  that  glass  for  half  the  money." 

"  Perhaps  I  could,"  was  Manning's  quiet  reply,  "  but 
I  was  eager  to  get  it  back  at  once." 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  59 

"  Get  it  back  ?  Why,  it  was  n't  stolen  from  you,  was 
it  ?  I  never  did  suppose  he  came  by  it  honestly." 

"It  was  not  stolen  from  me  personally,  but  it  be- 
longed to  my  family.  It  was  made  for  Giovanni 
Manin,  who  fled  from  Venice  to  Amsterdam  three 
hundred  odd  years  ago.  His  grandson  and  namesake 
left  Amsterdam  for  New  Amsterdam  half  a  century 
later.  And  when  the  English  changed  New  Amster- 
dam into  New  York,  Jan  Mannin  became  John  Man- 
ning—  and  I  am  his  direct  descendant,  and  the  first  of 
my  blood  to  return  to  Venice  to  get  the  goblet  Gio- 
vanni Manin  ordered  and  left  behind." 

"Well,  I  'm  damned!  "  said  Larry,  pensively. 

"  And  now,"  continued  John  Manning  as  they  took 
their  seats  in  the  gondola,  "  tell  the  man  to  go  to  the 
church  where  the  picture  of  Mary  Magdalen  is.  I 
want  a  good  look  at  that  woman  ! " 

In  the  evening,  as  John  Manning  sat  in  a  little  caff& 
under  the  arcades  of  the  Piazza  San  Marco,  sipping  a 
tiny  cup  of  black  coffee,  Larry  entered  with  a  rush  of 
righteous  indignation. 

"  What 's  the  matter,  Larry  ?  "  was  John  Manning's 
calm  query. 

"  There  's  the  devil  to  pay  at  home.  South  Carolina 
has  fired  on  the  flag  at  Sumter." 

Three  weeks  later  Colonel  Manning  was  assigned  to 
duty  drilling  the  raw  recruits  soon  to  be  the  Army  of 
the  Potomac. 


60  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

II. 

IN   THE   NEW   WORLD. 

IN  the  month  of  February,  1864,  a  chance  newspaper 
paragraph  informed  whom  it  might  concern  that 
Major  Laurence  Laughton,  having  three  weeks'  leave 
of  absence  from  his  regiment,  was  at  the  Astor  House. 
In  consequence  of  this  advertisement  of  his  where- 
abouts, Major  Laughton  received  many  cheerful  cir- 
culars and  letters,  in  most  of  which  his  attention  was 
claimed  for  the  artificial  limb  made  by  the  advertiser. 
He  also  received  a  letter  from  Colonel  John  Manning, 
urgently  bidding  him  to  come  out  for  a  day  at  least  to 
his  little  place  on  the  Hudson,  where  he  was  lying  sick, 
and,  as  he  feared,  sick  unto  death.  On  the  receipt  of 
this  Larry  cut  short  a  promising  flirtation  with  a  war- 
widow  who  sat  next  him  at  table,  and  took  the  first 
train  up  the  river.  It  was  a  bleak  day,  and  there  was 
at  least  a  foot  of  snow  on  the  ground,  as  hard  and  as 
dry  as  though  it  had  clean  forgot  that  it  was  made  of 
water.  As  Larry  left  the  little  station,  to  which  the 
train  had  slowly  struggled  at  last,  an  hour  behind  time, 
the  wind  sprang  up  again  and  began  to  moan  around 
his  feet  and  to  sting  his  face  with  icy  shot ;  and  as  he 
trudged  across  the  desolate  path  which  led  to  Manning's 
lonely  house  he  discovered  that  rude  Boreas  could  be 
as  keen  a  sharp-shooter  as  any  in  the  rifle-pits  around 
Richmond.  A  hard  walk  up-hill  for  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  brought  him  to  the  brow  of  the  cliff  on  which 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  61 

stood  the  forlorn  and  wind-swept  house  where  John 
Manning  lay.  An  unkempt  and  hideous  old  crone  as 
black  as  night  opened  the  door  for  him.  He  left  in  the 
hall  his  hat  and  overcoat  and  a  little  square  box  he 
had  brought  in  his  hand ;  and  then  he  followed  the 
ebony  hag  upstairs  to  Colonel  Manning's  room.  Here 
at  the  door  she  left  him,  after  giving  a  sharp  knock. 
A  weak  voice  said,  "pome  in  ! " 

Laurence  Laughton  entered  the  room  with  a  quick 
step,  but  the  light-hearted  words  with  which  he  had 
meant  to  encourage  his  friend  died  on  his  lips  as  soon 
as  he  saw  how  grievously  that  friend  had  changed. 
John  Manning  had  faded  to  a  shadow  of  his  former 
self;  the  light  of  his  eye  was  quenched,  and  the  spirit 
within  him  seemed  broken;  the  fine,  sensitive,  noble 
face  lay  white  against  the  pillow,  looking  weary  and 
wan  arid  hopeless.  The  effort  to  greet  his  friend  ex- 
hausted him  and  brought  on  a  hard  cough,  and  he 
pressed  his  hand  to  his  breast  as  though  some  hidden 
malady  were  gnawing  and  burning  within. 

"  Well,  John,"  said  Larry,  as  he  took  a  seat  by  the 
bedside,  "  why  didn't  you  let  me  know  before  now  that 
you  were  laid  up  ?  I  could  have  got  away  a  month 
ago."^ 

"  Time  enough  yet,"  said  John  Manning  slowly ; 
"  time  enough  yet.  I  shall  not  die  for  another  week,  I 
fear." 

"  Why,  man,  you  must  not  talk  like  that.  You  are 
as  good  as  a  dozen  dead  men  yet,"  said  Larry,  trying 
to  look  as  cheerful  as  might  be. 

"I  am  as  good  as  dead  myself,"   said  his    friend 


62  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

seriously,  as  befitted  a  man  under  the  shadow  of  death ; 
"  and  I  have  no  wish  to  live.  The  sooner  I  am  out  of 
this  pain  and  powerlessness  the  better  I  shall  like  it." 

"  I  say,  John,  old  man,  this  is  no  way  for  you  to 
talk  !  Brace  up,  and  you  will  soon  be  another  man  !  " 

"  I  shall  soon  be  in  another  world,  I  hope,"  and  the 
helpless  misery  of  the  tone  in  which  these  few  words 
were  said  smote  Laurence  Laugh  ton  to  the  heart. 

"What's  the  matter  with  you?"  he  asked  with  as 
lively  an  air  as  he  could  attain,  for  the  ominous  and 
inexplicable  sadness  of  the  situation  was  fast  taking 
hold  on  him. 

"  I  have  a  bullet  through  the  lungs  and  a  pain  in  the 
heart." 

"  But  men  do  not  die  of  a  bullet  in  the  lungs  and  a 
pain  in  the  heart,"  was  Larry's  encouraging  response. 

"I  shall." 

"  Why  should  you  more  than  others  ?  " 

"  Because  there  is  something  else  —  something  mys- 
terious, some  unknown  malady  —  which  bears  me 
down  and  burns  me  up.  There  is  no  use  trying  to 
deceive  me,  Larry.  My  papers  are  made  out,  and  I 
shall  get  my  discharge  from  the  Army  of  the  Living  in 
a  very  few  days  now.  But  I  must  not  waste  the  little 
breath  I  have  left  in  talking  about  myself.  I  sent  for 
you  to  ask  a  favor." 

Larry  held  out  his  hand,  and  John  Manning  took  it, 
and  seemed  to  gain  strength  from  the  firm  clasp. 

"  I  knew  I  could  rely  on  you,"  he  said,  "  for  much  or 
for  little.  And  this  is  not  much,  for  I  have  not  much 
to  leave.  This  worn  old  house,  which  belonged  to  my 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  63 

grandmother,  and  in  which  I  spent  the  happiest  hours 
of  my  boyhood,  this  and  a  few  shares  of  stock  here 
and  there  are  all  I  have  to  leave.  I  do  not  know 
what  the  house  is  worth,  and  I  shall  be  glad  when  I 
am  gone  from  it.  If  I  had  not  come  here,  I  think 
I  might  perhaps  have  got  well.  There  seems  to  be 
something  deadly  about  the  place."  The  sick  man's 
voice  sank  to  a  wavering  whisper,  as  if  it  were  borne 
down  by  a  sudden  weight  of  impending  danger  against 
which  he  might  struggle  in  vain ;  he  gave  a  fearful 
glance  about  the  room,  as  though  seeking  a  mystic  foe, 
hidden  and  unknown.  "  The  very  first  day  we  were 
here  the  cat  lapped  its  milk  by  the  fire  and  then 
stretched  itself  out  and  died  without  a  sign.  And  I 
had  not  been  here  two  days  before  I  felt  the  fatal  in- 
fluence: the  trouble  from  my  wound  came  on  again, 
and  this  awful  burning  in  my  breast  began  to  torture 
me.  As  a  boy,  I  thought  that  heaven  must  be  like 
this  house ;  and  now  I  should  not  want  to  die  if  I 
thought  hell  could  be  worse ! " 

"  Why  don't  you  leave  the  hole,  since  you  hate  it 
so  ?  "  asked  Larry,  with  what  scant  cheeriness  he  could 
muster;  he  was  yielding  himself  slowly  to  the  place, 
though  he  fought  bravely  against  his  superstitious 
weakness. 

"  Am.  I  fit  to  be  moved  ? "  was  Manning's  query  in 
reply. 

"  But  you  will  be  better  soon,  and  then  " — 

"I  shall  be  worse  before  I  am  better,  and  I  shall 
never  be  better  in  this  life  or  in  this  place.  No,  no,  I 
must  die  in  my  hole,  like  a  dog.  Like  a  dog!"  and 


64  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

John  Manning  repeated  the  words  with  a  wistful  face. 
"  Do  you  remember  the  faithful  beast  who  always 
welcomed  me  here  when  we  came  up  before  we  went 
to  Europe  ?  " 

"  Of  course  I  do,"  said  Larry,  glad  to  get  the  sick 
man  away  from  his  sickness,  and  to  ease  his  mind  by 
talk  on  a  healthy  topic ;  "  he  was  a  splendid  fellow,  too. 
Cassar,  that  was  his  name,  was  n't  it  ?  " 

"Caesar  Borgia  I  called  him,"  was  Manning's  sad 
reply.  "I  knew  you  could  not  have  forgotten  him. 
He  is  dead.  Caesar  Borgia  is  dead.  He  was  the  last 
living  thing  that  loved  me  —  except  you,  Larry,  I  know 
—  and  he  is  dead.  He  died  this  morning.  He  came 
to  my  bedside  as  usual,  and  he  licked  my  hand  gently 
and  looked  up  in  my  face,  and  laid  him  down  along- 
side of  me  on  the  carpet  here  and  died.  Poor  Cassar 
Borgia  —  he  loved  me,  and  he  is  dead!  And  you, 
Larry,  you  must  not  stay  here.  The  air  is  fatal. 
Every  breath  may  be  your  last.  When  you  have  heard 
what  I  want,  you  must  be  off  at  once.  If  you  like,  you 
may  come  up  again  to  the  funeral  before  your  leave  is 
up.  I  saw  you  had  three  weeks." 

Laurence  Laughton  moved  uneasily  in  his  chair  and 
swallowed  with  difficulty.  "John,"  he  managed  to 
say  after  an  effort,  "  if  you  talk  to  me  like  that,  I  shall 
go  at  once.  Tell  me  what  it  is  you  want  me  to  do  for 
you." 

"I  want  you  to  take  care  of  my  wife  and  of  my 
child,  if  there  be  one  born  to  me  after  my  death." 

"  Your  wife  ?  "  repeated  Larry,  in  staring  surprise. 

"  You  did  not  know  I  was  married  ?    I  knew  it  at 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  65 

the  time,  as  the  boy  said,"  and  John  Manning  smiled 
bitterly. 

"  Where  is  she  ?  "  was  Larry's  second  query. 

"Here." 

"Here?" 

"In  this  house.  You  shall  see  her  before  you  go. 
And  after  the  funeral  I  want  you  to  get  her  away  from 
here  with  what  speed  you  can.  Sell  this  house  for 
what  it  will  bring,  and  put  the  money  into  government 
bonds.  You  may  find  it  hard  to  persuade  her  to 
move,  for  she  seems  to  have  a  strange  liking  for  this 
place.  She  breathes  freely  in  the  deadly  air  that  suf- 
focates me.  But  you  must  not  let  her  remain  here ; 
this  is  no  place  for  her  now  that  a  new  life  and  new 
duties  are  before  her." 

"How was  it  I  did  not  know  of  your  marriage?" 
asked  Larry. 

"  I  knew  nothing  about  it  myself  twenty-four  hours 
before  it  happened,"  answered  John  Manning.  "You 
need  not  look  surprised.  It  is  a  simple  story.  I  had 
this  shot  through  the  breast  at  Gettysburg  last  Fourth 
of  July.  I  lay  on  the  hillside  a  day  and  a  night  before 
relief  came.  Then  a  farmer  took  me  into  his  house. 
A  military  surgeon  dressed  my  wounds,  but  I  owed 
my  life  to  the  nursing  and  care  and  unceasing  attention 
of  a  young  lady  who  was  staying  with  the  farmer's 
daughter.  She  had  been  doing  her  duty  as  a  nurse 
as  near  to  the  field  as  she  could  go  ever  since  the  first 
Bull  Run.  She  saved  my  life,  and  I  gave  it  to  her  — 
what  there  was  of  it.  She  was  a  beautiful  woman, 
indeed  I  never  saw  a  more  beautiful  —  and  she  has  a 


66  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

strange  likeness  to  —  but  that  you  shall  see  for  your- 
self when  you  see  her.  She  is  getting  a  little  rest  now, 
for  she  has  been  up  all  night  attending  to  me.  She 
will  wait  on  me  in  spite  of  all  I  say ;  of  course  I  know 
there  is  no  use  wasting  effort  on  me  now.  She  is  the 
most  devoted  nurse  in  the  world  ;  and  we  shall  part  as 
we  met  —  she  taking  care  of  me  at  the  last  as  she  did 
at  the  first.  Would  God  our  relation  had  never  been 
other  than  patient  and  nurse!  It  would  have  been 
better  for  both  had  we  never  been  husband  and  wife ! " 
And  John  Manning  turned  his  face  to  the  wall  with  a 
weary  sigh ;  then  he  coughed  harshly,  and  raised  his 
hand  to  his  breast  as  though  to  stifle  the  burning 
within  him. 

"  It  seems  to  me,  John,  that  you  ought  not  to  talk 
like  that  of  the  woman  you  loved,"  said  Laurence 
Laughton,  with  unusual  seriousness. 

"I  never  loved  her,"  answered  Manning,  coldly. 
Then  he  turned,  and  asked  hastily,  "Do  you  think  I 
should  want  to  die  if  I  loved  her  ?  " 

"  But  she  loves  you,"  said  Laurence. 

"She  never  loved  me!"  was  Manning's  impatient 
retort. 

"  Then  why  were  you  married  ?  " 

"  That 's  what  I  would  like  to  know.  It  was  fate,  I 
suppose.  What  is  to  be,  is.  I  never  used  to  believe 
in  predestination,  but  I  know  that  of  my  own  free  will 
I  could  never  have  done  what  I  did." 

"  I  confess  I  do  not  understand  you,"  said  Larry. 

"  I  do  not  understand  myself.  There  is  so  much  in 
this  world  that  is  mysterious  —  I  hope  the  next  will  be 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  67 

different.  I  was  under  the  charm,  I  fancy,  when  I 
married  her.  She  is  a  beautiful  woman,  as  I  told  you, 
and  I  was  a  man,  and  I  was  weak,  and  I  had  hope. 
Why  she  married  me  that  early  September  evening  I 
do  not  know.  It  was  not  long  before  we  both  found 
out  our  mistake.  And  it  was  too  late  then.  We  were 
man  and  wife.  Don't  suppose  I  blame  her  —  I  do  not. 
I  have  no  cause  of  complaint.  She  is  a  good  wife  to 
me,  as  I  have  tried  to  be  a  good  husband  to  her.  We 
made  a  mistake  in  marrying  each  other,  and  we  know 
it— that 'sail!" 

Before  Laurence  Laughton  could  answer,  the  door 
opened  gently  and  Mrs.  Manning  entered  the  room. 
Laurence  rose  to  greet  his  friend's  wife,  but  the  act  was 
none  the  less  a  homage  to  her  resplendent  beauty.  In 
spite  of  the  worn  look  of  her  face,  she  was  the  most 
beautiful  woman  he  had  ever  seen.  She  had  tawny, 
tigress  hair,  and  hungry,  tigress  eyes.  The  eyes, 
indeed,  were  fathomless  and  indescribable,  and  their 
fitful  glance  had  something  uncanny  about  it.  The 
hair  was  nearly  of  the  true  Venetian  color,  and  she 
had  the  true  Venetian  sumptuousness  of  appearance, 
simple  as  was  her  attire.  She  seemed  as  though  she 
had  just  risen  from  the  couch  whereon  she  reclined 
before  Titian  or  Tintoretto,  and,  having  clothed  her- 
self, had  walked  forth  in  this  nineteenth  century  and 
these  United  States.  She  was  a  strange  and  striking 
figure,  and  Laurence  found  it  impossible  to  analyze 
exactly  the  curious  and  weird  impression  she  produced 
on  him.  Her  voice,  as  she  greeted  him,  gave  him  a 
peculiar  thrill ;  and  when  he  shook  hands  with  her  he 


68  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

seemed  to  feel  himself  face  to  face  with  some  strange 
being  from  another  land  and  another  century.  She 
inspired  him  with  a  supernatural  awe  he  was  not  wont 
to  feel  in  the  presence  of  woman.  He  had  a  dim  con- 
sciousness that  there  lingered  in  his  memory  the  glim- 
mering image  of  some  woman  seen  somewhere,  he 
knew  not  when,  who  was  like  unto  the  woman  before 
him. 

As  she  took  her  seat  by  the  side  of  the  bed  she  gave 
Laurence  Laughton  a  look  that  seemed  to  peer  into  his 
soul.  Laurence  felt  himself  quiver  under  it.  It  was 
a  look  to  make  a  man  fearful.  Then  John  Manning, 
who  had  moved  uneasily  as  his  wife  entered,  said, 
"Laurence,  can  you  see  any  resemblance  in  my  wife 
to  any  one  you  ever  saw  before  ?  " 

Their  eyes  met  again,  and  again  Laurence  had  a 
vague  remembrance  as  though  he  and  she  had  stood 
face  to  face  before  in  some  earlier  existence.  Then  his 
wandering  recollections  took  shape,  and  he  remembered 
the  face  and  the  form  and  the  haunting  mystery  of  the 
expression,  and  he  felt  for  a  moment  as  though  he  had 
been  permitted  to  peer  into  the  cabalistic  darkness  of 
an  awful  mystery,  though  he  failed  wholly  to  perceive 
its  occult  significance  —  if  significance  there  were  of 
any  sort. 

"  I  think  I  do  remember,"  he  said  at  last.  "  It  was 
in  Venice  —  at  the  Church  of  Santa  Maria  Magdalena 
—  the  picture  there  that "  — 

"  You  remember  aright !  "  interrupted  John  Man- 
ning. "  My  wife  is  the  living  image  of  the  Venetian 
woman  for  whose  beauty  Marco  Manin  was  one  day 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  69 

stabbed  in  the  back  with  a  glass  stiletto,  and  Giovanni 
Manin  fled  from  the  place  of  his  birth  and  never  saw  it 
again.  It  is  idle  to  fight  against  the  stars  in  their 
courses.  We  met  here  in  the  New  World,  she  and  I, 
as  they  met  in  the  Old  World  so  long  ago  —  and  the 
end  is  the  same.  It  was  to  be  —  it  was  to  be ! " 

Laurence  Laughton  gave  a  swift  glance  at  his  friend's 
wife  to  see  what  effect  these  words  might  have  on  her, 
and  he  was  startled  to  detect  on  her  face  the  same 
enigmatic  smile  which  was  the  chief  memory  he  had 
retained  of  the  Venetian  picture.  Truly  the  likeness 
between  the  painting  and  the  wife  of  his  friend  was 
marvellous ;  and  Laurence  tried  to  shake  off  a  morbid 
wonder  whether  there  might  be  any  obscure  and  in- 
scrutable survival  from  one  generation  to  another  across 
the  seas  and  across  the  years. 

"  If  you  remember  the  picture,"  said  John  Manning, 
"  perhaps  you  remember  the  quaint  goblet  of  Venetian 
glass  I  bought  the  same  day?" 

"  Of  course  I  do,"  said  Larry,  glad  to  get  Manning 
started  on  a  topic  of  talk  a  little  less  personal. 

"  Perhaps  you  know  what  has  become  of  it  ?  "  asked 
Manning. 

"I  can  answer  'of  course'  to  that,  too,"  replied 
Larry,  "because  I  have  it  here." 

"Here?" 

"  Here  —  in  a  little  square  box,  in  the  hall,"  answered 
Larry.  "I  had  it  in  my  trunk,  you  know,  when  we 
took  passage  on  the  Vanderbilt  at  Havre  that  May 
morning.  I  forgot  to  give  it  to  you  in  the  hurry  of 
landing,  and  I  have  n't  had  a  chance  since.  This  is  the 


70  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

first  time  I  have  seen  yon  for  nearly  three  years.  I 
found  the  box  this  morning,  and  I  thought  you  might 
like  to  have  it  again,  so  I  brought  it  up." 

John  Manning  rang  the  bell  at  the  head  of  his  bed. 
The  black  crone  answered  it,  and  soon  returned  with 
the  little  square  box.  Manning  impatiently  broke  the 
seals  and  cords  that  bound  its  cover  and  began  eagerly 
to  release  the  goblet  from  the  cotton  and  tissue  paper 
in  which  it  had  been  carefully  swathed  and  bandaged. 
Mrs.  Manning,  though  her  moods  were  subtler  and  more 
intense,  showed  an  anxiety  to  see  the  goblet  quite  as 
feverish  as  her  husband's.  In  a  minute  the  last  wrap- 
ping was  twisted  off  and  the  full  beauty  of  the  Vene- 
tian glass  was  revealed  to  them.  Assuredly  no  praise 
was  too  loud  for  its  delicate  and  exquisite  workmanship. 

"  Does  Mrs.  Manning  know  the  story  of  the  goblet  ?  " 
asked  Larry ;  "has  she  been  told  of  the  peculiar  virtue 
ascribed  to  it  ?  " 

"  She  has  too  great  a  fondness  for  the  horrible  and 
the  fantastic  not  to  have  heard  the  story  in  its  smallest 
details,"  said  Manning. 

Mrs.  Manning  had  taken  the  glass  in  her  fine,  thin 
hands.  Evidently  it  and  its  mystic  legend  had  a 
morbid  fascination  for  her.  A  strange  light  gleamed 
in  her  wondrous  eyes,  and  Laughton  was  startled  again 
to  see  the  extraordinary  resemblance  between  her  and 
the  picture  they  had  looked  at  on  the  day  the  goblet  had 
been  bought. 

"  When  the  poison  was  poured  into  it,"  she  said  at 
last,  with  quick  and  restless  glances  at  the  two  men, 
"  the  glass  broke  —  then  the  tale  was  true  ?  " 


VENETIAN  GLASS.  71 

"  It  was  a  coincidence  only,  I  'm  afraid,"  said  her 
husband,  who  had  rallied  and  regained  strength  under 
the  unwonted  excitement. 

Just  then  the  old-fashioned  clock  on  the  stairs  struck 
five.  Mrs.  Manning  started  up,  holding  the  goblet  in 
her  hand. 

"  It  is  time  for  your  medicine,"  she  said. 

"As  you  please,"  answered  her  husband  wearily, 
sinking  back  on  his  pillow.  "  My  wife  insists  on  giving 
me  every  drop  of  my  potions  with  her  own  hands.  I 
shall  not  trouble  her  much  longer,  and  I  doubt  if  it  is 
any  use  for  her  to  trouble  me  now." 

"  I  shall  give  you  everything  in  this  glass  after  this," 
she  said. 

"  In  the  Venetian  glass  ?  "  asked  Larry. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  turning  on  him  fiercely ;  "  why 
not  ?  " 

"  Do  you  think  the  doctor  is  trying  to  poison  me  ?  " 
asked  her  husband. 

"  No,  I  do  not  think  the  doctor  is  trying  to  poison 
yon,"  she  repeated  mechanically,  as  she  moved  toward 
a  little  sideboard  in  a  corner  of  the  room.  "  But  I  shall 
give  you  all  your  medicines  in  this  hereafter." 

She  stood  at  the  little  sideboard,  with  her  back 
toward  them,  and  she  mingled  the  contents  of  various 
phials  in  the  Venetian  goblet.  Then  she  turned  to 
cross  the  room  to  her  husband.  As  she  walked  with 
the  glass  in  her  hand  there  was  a  rift  in  the  clouds  high 
over  the  other  side  of  the  river,  and  the  rays  of  the 
setting  sun  thrust  themselves  through  the  window  and 
lighted  up  the  glory  of  her  hair  and  showed  the  strange 


72  VENETIAN  GLASS. 

gleam  in  her  staring  eyes.  Another  step,  and  the  red 
rays  fell  on  the  Venetian  glass,  and  it  burned  and 
glowed,  and  the  green  serpents  twined  about  its  ruby 
stem  seemed  to  twist  and  crawl  with  malignant  life, 
while  their  scorching  eyes  shot  fire.  Another  step,  and 
she  stood  by  the  bedside.  As  John  Manning  reached 
out  his  hand  for  the  goblet,  a  tremor  passed  through 
her,  her  fingers  clinched  the  fragile  stem,  and  the  glass 
fell  on  the  floor  and  was  shattered  to  shivers  as  its 
fellow  had  been  shattered  three  centuries  ago  and  more. 
She  still  stared  steadily  before  her;  then  her  lips  parted, 
and  she  said,  "  The  glass  broke  —  the  glass  broke  — 
then  the  tale  is  true !  "  And  with  one  hysteric  shriek 
she  fell  forward  amid  the  fragments  of  the  Venetian 
goblet,  unconscious  thereafter  of  all  things. 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

BY  H.  Ct  BUNNER. 


THE  yellow  afternoon  sun  came  in  through  the  long 
blank  windows  of  the  room  wherein  the  Superior 
Court  of  the  State  of  New  York,  Part  II.,  Gillespie, 
Judge,  was  in  session.  The  hour  of  adjournment  was 
near  at  hand,  a  dozen  court-loungers  slouched  on  the 
hard  benches  in  the  attitudes  of  cramped  carelessness 
which  mark  the  familiar  of  the  halls  of  justice.  Be- 
yond the  rail  sat  a  dozen  lawyers  and  lawyers'  clerks, 
and  a  dozen  weary  jurymen.  Above  the  drowsy 
silence  rose  the  nasal  voice  of  the  junior  counsel  for 
the  defence,  who  in  a  high  monotone,  with  his  faint 
eyes  fixed  on  the  paper  in  his  hand,  was  making  some- 
thing like  a  half-a-score  of  "  requests  to  charge." 

Nobody  paid  attention  to  him.  Two  lawyers'  clerks 
whispered  like  mischievous  schoolboys,  hiding  behind 
a  pile  of  books  that  towered  upon  a  table.  Junior 
counsel  for  the  plaintiff  chewed  his  pencil  and  took 
advantage  of  his  opportunity  to  familiarize  himself 
with  certain  neglected  passages  of  the  New  Code. 
The  crier,  like  a  half-dormant  old  spider,  sat  in  his 
place  and  watched  a  boy  who  was  fidgetting  at  the  far 
end  of  the  room,  and  who  looked  as  though  he  wanted 
to  whistle. 

73 


74  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

The  jurymen  might  have  been  dream-men,  vague 
creations  of  an  autumn  afternoon's  doze.  It  was  hard 
to  connect  them  with  a  world  of  life  and  business. 
Yet,  gazing  closer,  you  might  have  seen  that  one 
looked  as  if  he  were  thinking  of  his  dinner,  and  another 
as  if  he  were  thinking  of  the  lost  love  of  his  youth  ;  and 
that  the  expression  on  the  faces  of  the  others  ranged 
from  the  vacant  to  the  inscrutable.  The  oldest  juror, 
at  the  end  of  the  second  row,  was  sound  asleep. 
Everyone  in  the  court-room,  except  himself,  knew  it. 
No  one  cared. 

Gillespie,  J.,  was  writing  his  acceptance  of  an  invi- 
tation to  a  dinner  set  for  that  evening  at  Delmonico's. 
He  was  doing  this  in  such  a  way  that  he  appeared  to 
be  taking  copious  and  conscientious  notes.  Long  years 
on  the  bench  had  whitened  Judge  Gillespie's  hair,  and 
taught  him  how  to  do  this.  His  seeming  attentiveness 
much  encouraged  the  counsel  for  the  defence,  whose 
high-pitched  tone  rasped  the  air  like  the  buzzing  of  a  bee 
that  has  found  its  way  through  the  slats  of  the  blind 
into  some  darkened  room,  of  a  summer  noon,  and  that, 
as  it  seeks  angrily  for  egress,  raises  its  shrill  scandalized 
protest  against  the  idleness  and  the  pleasant  gloom. 

"  We  r'quest  y'r  Honor  t'  charge :  First,  't  forci- 
ble entry  does  not  const'oot  tresp'ss,  'nless  intent's 
proved.  Thus,  'f  a  man  rolls  down  a  bank  "  — 

But  the  judge's  thoughts  were  in  the  private  supper- 
room  at  Delmonico's.  He  had  no  interest  in  the  sad 
fate  of  the  hero  of  the  supposititious  case,  who  had  been 
obliged,  by  a  strange  and  ingenious  combination  of 
accidents,  to  make  violent  entrance,  incidentally  dam- 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  75 

aging  the  persons  and  property  of  others,  into  the  lands 
and  tenements  of  his  neighbor. 

And  further  away  yet  the  droning  lawyer  had  set 
ja-travelling  the  thoughts  of  Horace  Walpole,  clerk  for 
Messrs.  Weeden,  Snowden  &  Gilfeather ;  for  the 
young  man  sat  with  his  elbows  on  the  table,  his  head 
in  his  hands,  a  sad  half-smile  on  his  lips,  and  his  brown 
eyes  looking  through  vacancy  to  St.  Lawrence  County, 
New  York. 

He  saw  a  great,  shabby  old  house,  shabby  with  the 
awful  shabbiness  of  a  sham  grandeur  laid  bare  by  time 
and  mocked  of  the  pitiless  weather.  There  was  a  great 
sham  Grecian  portico  at  one  end ;  the  white  paint  was 
well-nigh  washed  away,  and  the  rain-streaked  wooden 
pillars  seemed  to  be  weeping  tears  of  penitence  for 
having  lied  about  themselves  and  pretended  to  be 
marble. 

The  battened  walls  were  cracked  and  blistered. 
The  Grecian  temple  on  the  hillock  near  looked  much 
like  a  tomb,  and  not  at  all  like  a  summer-house.  The 
flower-garden  was  so  rank  and  ragged,  so  overgrown 
with  weed  and  vine,  that  it  was  spared  the  mortification 
of  revealing  its  neglected  maze,  the  wonder  of  the 
county  in  1820.  All  was  sham,  save  the  decay.  That 
was  real;  and  by  virtue  of  its  decrepitude  the  old 
house  seemed  to  protest  against  modern  contempt,  as 
though  it  said:  "I  have  had  my  day.  I  was  built 
when  people  thought  this  sort  of  thing  was  the  right 
sort  of  thing;  when  we  had  our  own  little  pseudo- 
classic  renaissance  in  America.  I  lie  between  the 
towns  of  Aristotle  and  Sabine  Farms.  I  am  a  gen- 


76  THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

tleman's  residence,  and  my  name  is  Montevista.  I  was 
built  by  a  prominent  citizen.  You  need  not  laugh 
through  your  lattices,  you  smug  new  Queen  Anne  cot- 
tage, down  there  in  the  valley!  What  will  become  of 
you  when  the  falsehood  is  found  out  of  your  imitation 
bricks  and  your  tiled  roof  of  shingles,  and  your  stained 
glass  that  is  only  a  sheet  of  transparent  paper  pasted 
on  a  pane  ?  You  are  a  young  sham ;  I  am  an  old  one. 
Have  some  respect  for  age !  " 

Its  age  was  the  crowning  glory  of  the  estate  of 
Montevista.  There  was  nothing  new  on  the  place 
except  a  third  mortgage.  Yet  had  Montevista  villa 
put  forth  a  juster  claim  to  respect,  it  would  have  said : 
"I  have  had  my  day.  Where  all  is  desolate  and  silent 
now,  there  was  once  light  and  life.  Along  these  halls 
and  corridors,  the  arteries  of  my  being,  pulsed  a  hot 
blood  of  joyous  humanity,  fed  with  delicate  fare,  kin- 
dled with  generous  wine.  Every  corner  under  my  roof 
was  alive  with  love  and  hope  and  ambition.  Great 
men  and  dear  women  were  here;  and  the  host  was 
great  and  the  hostess  was  gracious  among  them  all. 
The  laughter  of  children  thrilled  my  gaudily  decked 
stucco.  To-day  an  old  man  walks  up  and  down  my 
lonely  drawing-rooms,  with  bent  head,  murmuring  to 
himself  odds  and  ends  of  tawdry  old  eloquence,  wan- 
dering in  a  dead  land  of  memory,  waiting  till  Death 
shall  take  him  by  the  hand  and  lead  him  out  of  his 
ruinous  house,  out  of  his  ruinous  life." 

Death  had  indeed  come  between  Horace  and  the 
creation  of  his  spiritual  vision.  Never  again  should 
the  old  man  walk,  as  to  the  boy's  eyes  he  walked  now, 


THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  77 

over  the  creaking  floors,  from  where  the  Nine  Muses 
simpered  on  the  walls  of  the  south  parlor  to  where 
Homer  and  Plutarch,  equally  simpering,  yet  simpering 
with  a  difference,  —  severely  simpering,  —  faced  each 
other  across  the  north  room.  Horace  saw  his  father 
stalking  on  his  accustomed  round,  a  sad,  familiar  figure, 
tall  and  bent.  The  hands  were  clasped  behind  the 
back,  the  chin  was  bowed  on  the  black  stock ;  but  every 
now  and  then  the  thin  form  drew  itself  straight,  the 
fine,  clean-shaven,  aquiline  face  was  raised,  beaming 
with  the  ghost  of  an  old  enthusiasm,  and  the  long  right 
arm  was  lifted  high  in  the  air  as  he  began,  his  sonorous 
tones  a  little  tremulous  in  spite  of  the  restraint  of  old- 
time  pomposity  and  deliberation,  — 

"  Mr.  Speaker,  I  rise  ; "  —  or,  "  If  your  Honor 
please  "  — 

The  forlorn,  helpless  earnestness  oi  this  mockery  of 
life  touched  Horace's  heart ;  and  yet  he  smiled  to  think 
how  different  were  the  methods  and  manners  of  his 
father  from  those  of  brother  Hooper,  whose  requests 
still  droned  up  to  the  reverberating  hollows  of  the  roof, 
and  there  were  lost  in  a  subdued  boom  and  snarl  of 
echoes  such  as  a  court-room  only  can  beget. 

Two  generations  ago,  when  the  Honorable  Horace 
Kortlandt  Walpole  was  the  rising  young  lawyer  of  the 
State ;  when  he  was  known  as  "  the  Golden-Mouthed 
Orator  of  St.  Lawrence  County,"  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  assuming  that  he  owned  whatever  court  he  practised 
in ;  and,  as  a  rule,  he  was  right.  The  most  bullock- 
brained  of  country  judges  deferred  to  the  brilliant 
young  master  of  law  and  eloquence,  and  his  "  requests  " 


78  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

were  generally  accepted  as  commands  and  obeyed  as 
such.  Of  course  the  great  lawyer,  for  form's  sake,  threw 
a  veil  of  humility  over  his  deliverances  ;  but  even  that 
he  rent  to  shreds  when  the  fire  of  his  eloquence  once 
got  fairly  aglow. 

"May  it  please  your  Honor!  Before  your  Honor 
exercises  the  sacred  prerogative  of  your  office  —  before 
your  Honor  performs  the  sacred  duty  which  the  State 
has  given  into  your  hands  —  before,  with  that  lucid 
genius  to  which  I  bow  my  head,  you  direct  the  minds 
of  these  twelve  good  men  and  true  in  the  path  of  strict 
judicial  investigation,  I  ask  your  Honor  to  instruct  them 
that  they  must  bring  to  their  deliberations  that  im- 
partial justice  which  the  laws  of  our  beloved  country 

—  of  which  no  abler  exponent  than  your  Honor  has 
ever  graced  the  bench,  —  which  the  laws  of  our  beloved 
country  guarantee   to  the  lowest   as  well   as  to   the 
loftiest  of   her  citizens  —  from  the  President  in  the 
Executive  Mansion  to  the  humble  artisan  at  the  forge 

—  throughout   this  broad   land,  from   the  lagoons  of 
•Louisiana  to  where  the  snow-clad  forests  of  Maine  hurl 

defiance  at  the  descendants  of  Tory  refugees  in  the 
barren  wastes  of  Nova  Scotia  "  — 

Horace  remembered  every  word  and  every  gesture 
of  that  speech.  He  recalled  even  the  quick  upward 
glance  from  under  the  shaggy  eyebrows  with  which 
his  father  seemed  to  see  again  the  smirking  judge 
catching  at  the  gross  bait  of  flattery ;  he  knew  the 
little  pause  which  the  speaker's  memory  had  filled  with 
the  applause  of  an  audience  long  since  dispersed  to 
various  silent  country  graveyards;  and  he  wondered, 


THE   RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  79 

pityingly,  if  it  were  possible  that  even  in  his  father's 
prime  that  wretched  allusion  to  old  political  hatreds 
had  power  to  stir  the  fire  of  patriotism  in  the  citizen's 
bosom. 

"  Poor  old  father !  "  said  the  boy  to  himself.  The 
voice  which  had  for  so  many  years  been  but  an  echo 
was  stilled  wholly  now.  Brief  victory  and  long  defeat 
were  nothing  now  to  the  golden-mouthed  orator. 

"Shall  I  fail  as  he  failed?"  thought  Horace:  "No! 
I  can't.  Have  n't  I  got  her  to  work  for  ?  " 

And  then  he  drew  out  of  his  breast  pocket  a  red 
silk  handkerchief  and  turned  it  over  in  his  hand  with 
a  movement  that  concealed  and  caressed  at  the  same 
time. 

It  was  a  very  red  handkerchief.  It  was  not  ver- 
milion, nor  "  cardinal,"  nor  carmine,  —  a  strange  Ori- 
ental idealization  of  blood-red  which  lay  well  on  the 
soft,  fine,  luxurious  fabric.  But  it  was  an  unmistakable, 
a  shameless,  a  barbaric  red. 

And  as  he  looked  at  it,  young  Hitchcock,  of  Hitch- 
cock &  Van  Rensselaer,  came  up  behind  him  and 
leaned  over  his  shoulder. 

"  Where  did  you  get  the  handkerchief,  Walpole  ? " 
he  whispered;  "you  ought  to  hang  that  out  for  an 
auction  flag,  and  sell  out  your  cases." 

Horace  stuffed  it  back  in  his  pocket. 

"  You  'd  be  glad  enough  to  buy  some  of  them,  if  you 
got  the  show,"  he  returned ;  but  the  opportunity  for  a 
prolonged  contest  of  wit  was  cut  short.  The  judge 
was  folding  his  letter,  and  the  nasal  counsel,  having 
finished  his  reading,  stood  gazing  in  doubt  and  trepi- 


80  THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

dation  at  the  bench,  and  asking  himself  why  his  Honor 
had  not  passed  on  each  point  as  presented.  He  found 
out. 

"Are  you  prepared  to  submit  those  requests  in 
writing?"  demanded  Gillespie,  J.,  sharply  and  sud- 
denly. He  knew  well  enough  that  that  poor  little 
nasal,  nervous  junior  counsel  would  never  have  trusted 
himself  to  speak  ten  consecutive  sentences  in  court 
without  having  every  word  on  paper  before  him. 

"Ye-yes,"  the  counsel  stammered,  and  handed  up 
his  careful  manuscript. 

"  I  will  examine  these  to-night,"  said  his  Honor,  and, 
apparently,  he  made  an  endorsement  on  the  papers. 
He  was  really  writing  the  address  on  the  envelope  of 
his  letter.  Then  there  was  a  stir,  and  a  conversation 
between  the  judge  and  two  or  three  lawyers,  all  at 
once,  which  was  stopped  when  his  Honor  gave  an 
Olympian  nod  to  the  clerk. 

The  crier  arose. 

"  He'  ye !  he'  ye !  he'  ye ! "  he  shouted  with  perfunc- 
tory vigor.  "Wall  —  wah  —  wah!"  the  high  ceiling 
slapped  back  at  him ;  and  he  declaimed,  on  one  note, 
a  brief  address  to  "  Awperns  han  bins  "  in  that  court,' 
of  which  nothing  was  comprehensible  save  the  words 
"Monday  next  at  eleven  o'clock."  And  then  the 
court  collectively  rose,  and  individually  put  on  hats  for 
the  most  part  of  the  sort  called  queer. 

All  the  people  were  chattering  in  low  voices ;  chairs 
were  moved  noisily,  and  the  slumbering  juror  opened 
his  weary  eyes  and  troubled  himself  with  an  uncalled- 
for  effort  to  look  as  though  he  had  been  awake  all  the 


THE  EED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  81 

time  and  did  n't  like  the  way  things  were  going,  at  all. 
Horace  got  from  the  clerk  the  papers  for  which  he  had 
been  waiting,  and  was  passing  out,  when  his  Honor 
saw  him  and  hailed  him  with  an  expressive  grunt.  , 

Gillespie,  J.,  looked  over  his  spectacles  at  Horace. 

"  Shall  you  see  Judge  Weeden  at  the  office  ?  Yes  ? 
Will  you  have  the  kindness  to  give  him  this  —  yes? 
If  it 's  no  trouble  to  you,  of  course." 

Gillespie,  J.,  was  not  over-careful  of  the  feelings  of 
lawyers'  clerks,  as  a  rule ;  but  he  had  that  decent  dis- 
inclination to  act  ultra  prcescriptum  which  marks  the 
attitude  of  the  well-bred  man  toward  his  inferiors  in 
office.  He  knew  that  he  had  no  business  to  use  Wee- 
den,  Snowden  &  Gilfeather's  clerk  as  a  messenger  in 
his  private  correspondence. 

Horace  understood  him,  took  the  letter,  and  allowed 
himself  a  quiet  smile  when  he  reached  the  crowded 
corridor. 

What  mattered,  he  thought,  as  his  brisk  feet  clattered 
down  the  wide  stairs  of  the  rotunda,  the  petty  inso- 
lence of  office  now?  He  was  Gillespie's  messenger 
to-day ;  but  had  not  his  young  powers  already  received 
recognition  from  a  greater  than  Gillespie  ?  If  Judge 
Gillespie  lived  long  enough  he  should  put  his  gouty  old 
legs  under  Judge  Walpole's  mahogany,  and  prose  over 
his  port  —  yes,  he  should  have  port,  like  the  relic  of 
mellow  old  days  that  he  was  —  of  the  times  "when 
your  father-in-law  and  I,  Walpole,  were  boys  together." 

Ah,  there  you  have  the  spell  of  the  Red  Silk  Hand- 
kerchief ! 

It  was  a  wonderful  tale  to  Horace ;  for  he  saw  it  in 


82  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

that  wonderful  light  which  shall  shine  on  no  man  of 
us  more  than  once  in  his  life  —  on  some  of  us  not  at 
all,  Heaven  help  us  !  —  but,  in  the  telling,  it  is  a  simple 
tale: 

"  The  Golden-Mouthed  Orator  of  St.  Lawrence  "  was 
at  the  height  of  his  fame  in  that  period  of  storm  and 
stress  which  had  the  civil  war  for  its  climax.  His  mis- 
fortune was  to  be  drawn  into  a  contest  for  which  he 
was  not  equipped,  and  in  which  he  had  little  interest. 
His  sphere  of  action  was  far  from  the  battle-ground  of 
the  day.  The  intense  localism  that  bounded  his  knowl- 
edge and  his  sympathies  had  but  one  break  —  he  had 
tasted  in  his  youth  the  extravagant  hospitality  of  the 
South,  and  he  held  it  in  grateful  remembrance.  So  it 
happened  that  he  was  a  trimmer,  —  a  moderationist  he 
called  himself,  —  a  man  who  dealt  in  optimistic  gener- 
alities, and  who  thought  that  if  everybody  —  the  slaves 
included  —  would  only  act  temperately  and  reasonably, 
and  view  the  matter  from  the  standpoint  of  pure  policy, 
the  differences  of  South  and  North  could  be  settled  as 
easily  as,  through  his  own  wise  intervention,  the  old 
turnip-field  feud  of  Farmer  Oliver  and  Farmer  Bunker 
had  been  wiped  out  of  existence. 

His  admirers  agreed  with  him,  and  they  sent  him  to 
Congress  to  fill  the  unexpired  short  term  of  their  rep- 
resentative, who  had  just  died  in  Washington  of  what 
we  now  know  as  a  malarial  fever.  It  was  not  to  be 
expected,  perhaps,  that  the  Honorable  Mr.  Walpole 
would  succeed  in  putting  a  new  face  on  the  great 
political  question  in  the  course  of  his  first  term ;  but 
they  all  felt  sure  that  his  first  speech  would  startle  men 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  83 

who  had  never  heard  better  than  what  Daniel  Webster 
had  had  to  offer  them. 

But  the  gods  were  against  the  Honorable  Mr.  Wai- 
pole.  On  the  day  set  for  his  great  effort  there  was 
what  the  theatrical  people  call  a  counter-attraction. 
Majah  Pike  had  come  up  from  Mizourah,  sah,  to  cane 
that  demn'd  Yankee  hound,  Chahles  Sumnah,  sah, — yes, 
sah,  to  thrash  him  like  a  dawg,  begad !  And  all  Wash- 
ington had  turned  out  to  see  the  performance,  which 
was  set  down  for  a  certain  hour,  in  front  of  Mr.  Sum- 
ner's  door. 

There  was  just  a  quorum  when  the  golden-mouthed 
member  began  his  great  speech,  —  an  inattentive,  chat- 
tering crowd,  that  paid  no  attention  to  his  rolling  rhet- 
oric and  rococo  grandiloquence.  He  told  the  empty 
seats  what  a  great  country  this  was,  and  how  beautiful 
was  a  middle  policy,  and  he  illustrated  this  with  a 
quotation  from  Homer,  in  the  original  Greek  (a  neat 
novelty :  Latin  was  fashionable  for  parliamentary  use 
in  Webster's  time),  with,  for  the  benefit  of  the  unedu- 
cated, the  well-known  translation  by  the  great  Alex- 
ander Pope,  commencing : 

"  To  calm  their  passions  with  the  words  of  Age, 
Slow  from  his  seat  arose  the  Pylian  sage, 
Experienced  Nestor,  in  Persuasion  skilled, 
Words  sweet  as  honey  from  his  lips  distilled  "  — 

When  Nestor  and  Mr.  Walpole  closed,  there  was  no 
quorum.  The  member  from  New  Jersey,  who  had 
engaged  him  in  debate,  was  sleeping  the  sleep  of 
honorable  intoxication  in  his  seat.  Outside,  all  Wash- 


84  THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

ington  was  laughing  and  cursing.  Majah  Pike  had  not 
appeared. 

It  was  the  end  of  the  golden-mouthed  orator.  His 
voice  was  never  heard  again  in  the  House.  His  one 
speech  was  noticed  only  to  be  laughed  at,  and  the  news 
went  home  to  his  constituents.  They  showed  that 
magnanimity  which  the  poets  tell  us  is  an  attribute  of 
the  bucolic  character.  They,  so  to  speak,  turned  over 
the  pieces  of  their  broken  idol  with  their  cow-hide 
boots,  and  remarked  that  they  had  known  it  was  clay, 
all  along,  and  dern  poor  clay  at  that. 

So  the  golden-mouthed  went  home,  to  try  to  make  a 
ruined  practice  repair  his  ruined  fortune ;  to  give  mort- 
gages on  his  home  to  pay  the  debts  his  hospitality  had 
incurred  ;  to  discuss  with  a  few  feeble  old  friends  ways 
and  means  by  which  the  war  might  have  been  averted; 
to  beget  a  son  of  his  old  age,  and  to  see  the  boy  grow 
up  in  a  new  generation,  with  new  ideas,  new  hopes, 
new  ambitions,  and  a  lifetime  before  him  to  make 
memories  in. 

They  had  little  enough  in  common,  but  they  came  to 
be  great  friends  as  the  boy  grew  older,  for  Horace  in- 
herited all  his  traits  from  the  old  man,  except  a  certain 
stern  energy  which  came  from  his  silent,  strong-hearted 
mother,  and  which  his  father  saw  with  a  sad  joy. 

Mr.  Walpole  sent  his  son  to  New  York  to  study  law 
in  the  office  of  Messrs.  Weeden,  Snowden  &  Gilfeather, 
who  were  a  pushing  young  firm  in  1850.  Horace  found 
it  a  very  quiet  and  conservative  old  concern.  Snowden 
and  Gilfeather  were  dead ;  Weeden  had  been  on  the 
bench  and  had  gone  off  the  bench  at  the  call  of  a 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  85 

"lucrative  practice;"  there  were  two  new  partners, 
whose  names  appeared  only  on  the  glass  of  the  office 
door  and  in  a  corner  of  the  letter-heads. 

Horace  read  his  law  to  some  purpose.  He  became 
the  managing  clerk  of  Messrs.  Weeden,  Snowden  & 
Gilfeather.  This  particular  managing  clerkship  was 
one  of  unusual  dignity  and  prospective  profit.  It 
meant,  as  it  always  does,  great  responsibility,  little 
honor,  and  less  pay.  But  the  firm  was  so  peculiarly 
constituted  that  the  place  was  a  fine  stepping-stone  for 
a  bright  and  ambitious  boy.  One  of  the  new  partners 
was  a  business  man,  who  had  put  his  money  into  the 
concern  in  1860,  and  who  knew  and  cared  nothing 
about  law.  He  kept  the  books  and  managed  the 
money,  and  was  beyond  that  only  a  name  on  the  door 
and  a  terror  to  the  office-boys.  The  other  new  partner 
was  a  young  man  who  made  a  specialty  of  collecting 
debts.  He  could  wring  gold  out  of  the  stoniest  and 
barrenest  debtor ;  and  there  his  usefulness  ended.  The 
general  practice  of  the  firm  rested  on  the  shoulders  of 
Judge  Weeden,  who  was  old,  lazy,  and  luxury-loving, 
and  who,  to  tell  the  honest  truth,  shirked  his  duties. 
Such  a  state  of  affairs  would  have  wrecked  a  younger 
house ;  but  Weeden,  Snowden  &  Gilfeather  had  a  great 
name,  and  the  consequences  of  his  negligent  feebleness 
had  not  yet  descended  upon  Judge  Weeden's  head. 

That  they  would,  in  a  few  years,  that  the  Judge  knew 
it,  and  that  he  was  quite  ready  to  lean  on  a  strong 
young  arm,  Horace  saw  clearly. 

That  his  own  arm  was  growing  in  strength  he  also 
saw ;  and  the  Judge  knew  that,  too.  He  was  Judge 


86  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

Weeden's  pet.  All  in  the  office  recognized  the  fact. 
All,  after  reflection,  concluded  that  it  was  a  good  thing 
that  he  was.  New  blood  had  to  come  into  the  firm 
sooner  or  later,  and  although  it  was  not  possible  to 
watch  the  successful  rise  of  this  boy  without  a  little 
natural  envy  and  heart-burning,  yet  it  was  to  be  con- 
sidered that  Horace  was  one  who  would  be  honorable, 
just,  and  generous  wherever  fortune  put  him. 

Horace  was  a  gentleman.  They  all  knew  it.  Barnes 
and  Haskins,  the  business  man  and  the  champion  col- 
lector, knew  it  down  in  the  shallows  of  their  vulgar 
little  souls.  Judge  Weeden,  who  had  some  of  that 
mysterious  ichor  of  gentlehood  in  his  wine-fed  veins, 
knew  it  and  rejoiced  in  it.  And  Horace  —  I -can  say 
for  Horace  that  he  never  forgot  it. 

He  was  such  a  young  prince  of  managing  clerks  that 
no  one  was  surprised  when  he  was  sent  down  to  Sand 
Hills,  Long  Island,  to  make  preparations  for  the  re- 
organization of  the  Great  Breeze  Hotel  Company,  and 
the  transfer  of  the  property  known  as  the  Breeze  Hotel 
and  Park  to  its  new  owners.  The  Breeze  Hotel  was 
a  huge  "Queen  Anne"  vagary  which  had,  after  the 
fashion  of  hotels,  bankrupted  its  first  owners,  and  was 
now  going  into  the  hands  of  new  people,  who  were 
likely  to  make  their  fortunes  out  of  it.  The  property 
had  been  in  litigation  for  a  year  or  so ;  the  mechanics' 
liens  were  numerous,  and  the  mechanics  clamorous; 
and  although  the  business  was  not  particularly  com- 
plicated, it  needed  careful  and  patient  adjustment. 
Horace  knew  the  case  in  every  detail.  He  had 
drudged  over  it  all  the  winter,  with  no  especial  hope 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  87 

of  personal  advantage,  but  simply  because  that  was  his 
way  of  working.  He  went  down  in  June  to  the 
mighty  barracks,  and  lived  for  a  week  in  what  would 
have  been  an  atmosphere  of  paint  and  carpet-dye  had 
it  not  been  for  the  broad  sea  wind  that  blew  through 
the  five  hundred  open  windows,  and  swept  rooms  and 
corridors  with  salty  freshness.  The  summering  folk 
had  not  arrived  yet ;  there  were  only  the  new  manager 
and  his  six  score  of  raw  recruits  of  clerks  and  servants. 
But  Horace  felt  the  warm  blood  coming  back  to  his 
cheeks,  that  the  town  had  somewhat  paled,  and  he  was 
quite  content;  and  every  day  he  went  down  to  the 
long,  lonely  beach,  and  had  a  solitary  swim,  although 
the  sharp  water  whipped  his  white  skin  to  a  biting  red. 
The  sea  takes  a  long  while  to  warm  up  to  the  summer, 
and  is  sullen  about  it. 

He  was  to  have  returned  to  New  York  at  the  end  of 
the  week,  and  Haskins  was  to  have  taken  his  place ;  but 
it  soon  became  evident  to  Weeden,  Snowden  &  Gil- 
feather  that  the  young  man  would  attend  to  all  that 
was  to  be  done  at  Sand  Hills  quite  as  well  as  Mr.  Has- 
kins, or  —  quite  as  well  as  Judge  Weeden  himself,  for 
that  matter.  He  had  to  shoulder  no  great  responsi- 
bility ;  the  work  was  mostly  of  a  purely  clerical  nature, 
vexatious  enough,  but  simple.  It  had  to  be  done  on 
the  spot,  however ;  the  original  Breeze  Hotel  and  Park 
Company  was  composed  of  Sand  Killers,  and  the 
builders  were  Sand  Hillers,  too,  the  better  part  of  them. 
And  there  were  titles  to  be  searched;  for  the  whole 
scheme  was  an  ambitious  splurge  of  Sand  Hills  pride 
and  it  had  been  undertaken  and  carried  out  in  a  reck- 


88  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

less  and  foolish  way.  Horace  knew  all  the  wretched 
little  details  of  the  case,  and  so  Horace  was  entrusted 
with  duties  such  as  do  not  often  devolve  upon  a  man 
of  his  years ;  and  he  took  up  his  burden  proudly,  and 
with  a  glowing  consciousness  of  his  own  strength. 

Judge  Weeden  missed  his  active  and  intelligent 
obedience  in  the  daily  routine  of  office  business ;  but 
the  Judge  thought  it  was  just  as  well  that  Horace 
should  not  know  that  fact.  The  young  man's  time 
would  come  soon  enough,  and  he  would  be  none  the 
worse  for  serving  his  apprenticeship  in  modesty  and 
humility.  The  work  entrusted  to  him  was  an  honor 
in  itself.  And  then,  there  was  no  reason  why  poor 
Walpole's  boy  should  n't  have  a  sort  of  half-holiday  out 
in  the  country,  and  enjoy  his  youth. 

He  was  not  recalled.  The  week  stretched  out.  He 
worked  hard,  found  time  to  play,  hugged  his  quickened 
ambitions  to  his  breast,  wrote  hopeful  letters  to  the 
mother  at  Montevista,  made  a  luxury  of  his  loneliness, 
and  felt  a  bashful  resentment  when  the  "guests" 
of  the  hotel  began  to  pour  in  from  the  outside 
world. 

For  a  day  or  two  he  fought  shy  of  them.  But  these 
first  comers  were  lonely  too,  and  not  so  much  in  love 
with  loneliness  as  he  thought  he  was,  and  very  soon  he 
became  one  of  them.  He  had  found  out  all  the  walks 
and  drives;  he  knew  the  times  of  the  tides;  he  had 
made  friends  with  the  fishermen  for  a  league  up  and 
down  the  coast,  and  he  had  amassed  a  store  of  valuable 
hints  as  to  where  the  first  blue-fish  might  be  expected 
to  run.  Altogether  he  was  a  very  desirable  companion. 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  89 

Besides,  that  bright,  fresh  face  of  his,  and  a  certain 
look  in  it,  made  you  friends  with  him  at  once,  especially 
if  you  happened  to  be  a  little  older,  and  to  remember 
a  look  of  the  sort,  lost,  lost  forever,  in  a  boy's  looking- 
glass. 

So  he  was  sought  out,  and  he  let  himself  be  found, 
and  the  gregarious  instinct  in  him  waxed  delightfully. 

And  then  It  came.  Perhaps  I  should  say  She  came ; 
but  it  is  not  the  woman  we  love ;  it  is  our  dream  of 
her.  Sweet  and  tender,  fair  and  good,  she  may  be ; 
but  let  it  be  honor  enough  for  her  that  she  has  that 
glory  about  her  face  which  our  love  kindles  to  the  halo 
that  lights  many  a  man's  life  to  the  grave,  though  the 
face  beneath  it  be  dead  or  false. 

I  will  not  admit  that  it  was  only  a  pretty  girl  from 
Philadelphia  who  came  to  Sand  Hills  that  first  week  in 
July.  It  was  the  rosy  goddess  herself,  dove-drawn 
across  the  sea,  in  the  warm  path  of  the  morning  sun  — 
although  the  tremulous,  old-fashioned  handwriting  on 
the  hotel  register  only  showed  that  the  early  train  had 
brought  — • 

"  Samuel  Rittenhouse,  Philadelphia. 

" Miss  JKittenhouse,  do" 

It  was  the  Honorable  Samuel  Rittenhouse,  ex-Chief- 
Justice  of  Pennsylvania,  the  honored  head  of  the 
Pennsylvania  bar,  and  the  legal  representative  of  the 
Philadelphia  contingent  of  the  new  Breeze  Hotel  and 
Park  Company. 

In  the  evening  Horace  called  upon  him  in  his  rooms 
with  a  cumbersome  stack  of  papers,  and  patiently 


90  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

waded  through  explanations  and  repetitions  until  Mr. 
Rittenhouse's  testy  courtesy  —  he  had  the  nervous 
manner  of  age  apprehensive  of  youthful  irreverence  — 
melted  into  a  complacent  and  fatherly  geniality. 
Then,  when  the  long  task  was  done  and  his  young 
guest  arose,  he  picked  up  the  card  that  lay  on  the 
table  and  trained  his  glasses  on  it. 

"<H.  K.  Walpole?'"  he  said:  "are  you  a  New 
Yorker,  sir?" 

"  From  the  north  of  the  State,"  Horace  told  him. 

"Indeed,  indeed.  Why,  let  me  see  —  you  must  be 
the  son  of  my  old  friend  Walpole  — -  of  Otsego  — 
was  n't  it  ?  "  said  the  old  gentleman,  still  tentatively. 

"  St.  Lawrence,  sir." 

"  Yes,  St.  Lawrence  —  of  course,  of  course.  Why, 
I  knew  your  father  well,  years  ago,  sir.  We  were  at 
college  together." 

"At  Columbia?" 

"Yes  —  yes.  Why,  bless  me,"  Judge  Rittenhouse 
went  on,  getting  up  to  look  at  Horace :  "  you  're  the 
image  of  your  poor  father  at  your  age.  A  very  brilliant 
man,  sir,  a  very  able  man.  I  did  not  see  much  of  him 
after  we  left  college  —  I  was  a  Pennsylvanian,  and  he 
was  from  this  State  —  but  I  have  always  remembered 
your  father  with  respect  and  regard,  sir,  —  a  very 
able  man.  I  think  I  heard  of  his  death  some  years 
ago." 

"  Three  years  ago,"  said  Horace.  His  voice  fell  some- 
what. How  little  to  this  old  man  of  success  was  the 
poor,  unnoticed  death  of  failure ! 

" Three  years  only!"  repeated  the  judge,  half  apolo- 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  91 

getically ;  "  ah,  people  slip  away  from  each  other  in 
this  world  —  slip  away.  But  I  'm  glad  to  have  met  you, 
sir  —  very  much  pleased  indeed.  Rosamond ! " 

For  an  hour  the  subdued  creaking  of  a  rocking- 
chair  by  the  window  had  been  playing  a  monotonously 
pleasant  melody  in  Horace's  ears.  Now  and  then  a 
coy  wisp  of  bright  hair,  or  the  reflected  ghost  of  it,  had 
flashed  into  view  in  the  extreme  lower  left-hand  corner 
of  a  mirror  opposite  him.  Once  he  had  seen  a  bit  of 
white  brow  under  it,  and  from  time  to  time  the  low 
flutter  of  turning  magazine  leaves  had  put  in  a  brief 
second  to  the  rocking-chair. 

All  this  time  Horace's  brains  had  been  among  the 
papers  on  the  table;  but  something  else  within  him 
had  been  swaying  to  and  fro  with  the  rocking-chair, 
and  giving  a  leap  when  the  wisp  of  hair  bobbed  into 
sight. 

Now  the  rocking-chair  accompaniment  ceased,  and 
the  curtained  corner  by  the  window  yielded  up  its 
treasure,  and  Miss  Rittenhouse  came  forward,  with  one 
hand  brushing  the  wisp  of  hair  back  into  place,  as  if 
she  were  on  easy  and  familiar  terms  with  it.  Horace 
envied  it. 

"  Rosamond,"  said  the  judge :  "  This  is  Mr.  Walpole, 
the  son  of  my  old  friend  Walpole.  You  have  heard 
me  speak  of  Mr.  Walpole's  father." 

"  Yes,  papa,"  said  the  young  lady,  all  but  the  corners 
of  her  mouth.  And,  oddly  enough,  Horace  did  not 
think  of  being  saddened  because  this  young  woman 
had  never  heard  of  his  father.  Life  was  going  on  a 
new  key,  all  of  a  sudden,  with  a  hint  of  a  melody  to 


92  THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

be  unfolded  that  ran  in  very  different  cadences  from 
the  poor  old  tune  of  memory. 

My  heroine,  over  whose  head  some  twenty  summers 
had  passed,  was  now  in  the  luxuriant  prime  of  her 
youthful  beauty.  Over  a  brow  whiter  than  the  driven 
snow  fell  clustering  ringlets,  whose  hue  — 

That  is  the  way  the  good  old  novelists  and  story-tel- 
lers of  the  Neville  and  Beverley  days  would  have  set 
out  to  describe  Miss  Rittenhouse,  had  they  known  her. 
Fools  and  blind !  As  if  anyone  could  describe  —  as  if 
a  poet,  even,  could  more  than  hint  at  what  a  man  sees 
in  a  woman's  face  when,  seeing,  he  loves. 

For  a  few  moments  the  talkers  were  constrained,  and 
the  talk  was  meagre  and  desultory.  Then  the  Judge, 
who  had  been  rummaging  around  among  the  dust-heaps 
of  his  memory,  suddenly  recalled  the  fact  that  he  had 
once,  in  stage-coach  days,  passed  a  night  at  Montevista, 
and  had  been  most  hospitably  treated.  He  dragged 
this  fact  forth,  professed  a  lively  remembrance  of  Mrs. 
Walpole,  —  "a  fine  woman,  sir,  your  mother ;  a  woman 
of  many  charms,"  —  asked  after  her  present  health; 
and  then,  satisfied  that  he  had  acquitted  himself  of  his 
whole  duty,  withdrew  into  the  distant  depths  of  his 
own  soul  and  fumbled  over  the  papers  Horace  had 
brought  him,  trying  to  familiarize  himself  with  them, 
as  a  commander  might  try  to  learn  the  faces  of  his 
soldiers. 

Then  the  two  young  people  proceeded  to  find  the 
key  together,  and  began  a  most  harmonious  duet. 
Sand  Hills  was  the  theme.  Thus  it  was  that  they  had 
to  go  out  on  the  balcony,  where  Miss  Rittenhouse 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  93 

might  gaze  into  the  brooding  darkness  over  the  sea, 
and  watch  it  wink  a  slow  yellow  eye  with  a  humorous 
alternation  of  sudden  and  brief  red.  Thus,  also,  Hor- 
ace had  to  explain  how  the  lighthouse  was  constructed. 
This  moved  Miss  Rittenhouse  to  scientific  research. 
She  must  see  how  it  was  done.  Mr.  Walpole  would 
be  delighted  to  show  her.  Papa  was  so  much  inter- 
ested in  those  mechanical  matters.  Mr.  Walpole  had 
a  team  and  light  wagon  at  his  disposal,  and  would  very 
much  like  to  drive  Miss  Rittenhouse  and  her  father 
over  to  the  lighthouse.  Miss  Rittenhouse  communi- 
cated this  kind  offer  to  her  father.  Her  father  saw 
what  was  expected  of  him,  and  dutifully  acquiesced, 
like  an  obedient  American  father.  Miss  Rittenhouse 
had  managed  the  Rittenhouse  household  and  the  head 
of  the  house  of  Rittenhouse  ever  since  her  mother's 
death. 

Mr.  Walpole  really  had  a  team  at  his  disposal.  He 
came  from  a  country  where  people  do  not  chase  foxes, 
nor  substitutes  for  foxes;  but  where  they  know  and 
revere  a  good  trotter.  He  had  speeded  many  a  friend's 
horse  in  training  for  the  county  fair.  When  he  came 
to  Sand  Hills  his  soundness  in  the  equine  branch  of  a 
gentleman's  education  had  attracted  the  attention  of 
a  horsey  Sand-Hiller,  who  owned  a  showy  team  with 
a  record  of  2.37.  This  team  was  not  to  be  trusted  to  the 
ordinary  summer  boarder  on  any  terms ;  but  the  Sand- 
Hiller  was  thrifty  and  appreciative,  and  he  lured  Hor- 
ace into  hiring  the  turnout  at  a  trifling  rate,  and  thus 
captured  every  cent  the  boy  had  to  spare,  and  got  his 
horses  judiciously  exercised. 


94  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

There  was  a  showy  light  wagon  to  match  the  team, 
and  the  next  day  the  light  wagon,  with  Horace  and 
the  Rittenhouses  in  it,  passed  every  carriage  on  the 
road  to  the  lighthouse,  where  Miss  Rittenhouse  satisfied 
her  scientific  spirit  with  one  glance  at  the  lantern,  after 
giving  which  glance  she  went  outside  and  sat  in  the 
shade  of  the  white  tower  with  Horace,  while  the  keeper 
showed  the  machinery  to  the  Judge.  Perhaps  she 
went  to  the  Judge  afterward,  and  got  him  to  explain  it 
all  to  her. 

Thus  it  began,  and  for  two  golden  weeks  thus  it  went 
on.  The  reorganized  Breeze  Hotel  and  Park  Company 
met  in  business  session  on  its  own  property,  and  Hor- 
ace acted  as  a  sort  of  honorary  clerk  to  Judge  Ritten- 
house. The  company,  as  a  company,  talked  over  work 
for  a  couple  of  hours  each  day.  As  a  congregation  of 
individuals,  it  ate  and  drank  and  smoked  and  played 
billiards  and  fished  and  slept  the  rest  of  the  two  dozen. 
Horace  had  his  time  pretty  much  to  himself,  or  rather 
to  Miss  Rittenhouse,  who  monopolized  it.  He  drove 
her  to  the  village  to  match  embroidery  stuffs.  He 
danced  with  her  in  the  evenings  when  two  stolidly  soul- 
ful Germans,  one  with  a  fiddle  and  the  other  with  a 
piano,  made  the  vast  dining-room  ring  and  hum  with 
Suppe"  and  Waldteufel,  —  and  this  was  to  the  great 
and  permanent  improvement  of  his  waltzing.  She 
taught  him  how  to  play  lawn-tennis  —  he  was  an  old- 
fashioned  boy  from  the  backwoods,  and  he  thought 
that  croquet  was  still  in  existence,  so  she  had  to  teach 
him  to  play  lawn-tennis  —  until  he  learned  to  play 
much  better  than  she  could.  On  the  other  hand,  he 


THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  95 

was  a  fresh-water  swimmer  of  rare  wind  and  wiriness, 
and  a  young  sea-god  in  the  salt,  as  soon  as  he  got  used 
to  its  pungent  strength.  So  he  taught  her  to  strike 
out  beyond  the  surf-line,  with  broad,  breath-long 
sweeps,  and  there  to  float  and  dive  and  make  friends 
with  the  ocean.  Even  he  taught  her  to  fold  her  white 
arms  behind  her  back,  and  swim  with  her  feet.  As  he 
glanced  over  his  shoulder  to  watch  her  following  him, 
and  to  note  the  timorous,  admiring  crowd  on  the 
shore,  she  seemed  a  sea-bred  Venus  of  Milo  in  blue  serge. 
I  have  known  men  to  be  bored  by  such  matters. 
They  made  Horace  happy.  He  was  happiest,  perhaps, 
when  he  found  out  that  she  was  studying  Latin.  All 
the  girls  in  Philadelphia  were  studying  Latin  that 
summer.  They  had  had  a  little  school  Latin,  of  course ; 
but  now  their  aims  were  loftier.  Miss  Rittenhouse  had 
brought  with  her  a  Harkness's  Virgil,  an  Anthon's 
dictionary,  an  old  Bullion  &  Morris,  and  —  yes,  when 
Horace  asked  her,  she  had  brought  an  Interlinear ;  but 
she  didn't  mean  to  use  it.  They  rowed  out  to  the 
buoy,  and  put  the  Interlinear  in  the  sea.  They  sat  on 
the  sands  after  the  daily  swim,  and  enthusiastically 
labored,  with  many  an  unclassic  excursus,  over  P.  V. 
Maronis  Opera.  Horace  borrowed  some  books  of  a 
small  boy  in  the  hotel,  and  got  up  at  five  o'clock  in  the 
morning  to  run  a  couple  of  hundred  lines  or  so  ahead 
of  his  pupil,  "getting  out"  a  stint  that  would  have 
made  him  lead  a  revolt  had  any  teacher  imposed  it 
upon  his  class  a  few  years  before  —  for  he  was  fresh 
enough  from  schooling  to  have  a  little  left  of  the  little 
Latin  that  colleges  give. 


96  THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

He  wondered  how  it  was  that  he  had  never  seen  the 
poetry  of.  the  lines  before.  Forsan  et  hcec  olim 
tneminisse  juvabit  —  for  perchance  it  will  joy  us  here- 
after to  remember  these  things !  He  saw  the  wet  and 
weary  sailors  on  the  shore,  hungrily  eating,  breathing 
hard  after  their  exertions ;  he  heard  the  deep  cheerful- 
ness of  their  leader's  voice.  The  wind  blew  toward 
him  over  the  pine  barrens,  as  fresh  as  ever  it  blew  past 
Dido's  towers.  A  whiff  of  briny  joviality  and  adven- 
turous recklessness  seemed  to  come  from  the  page  on 
his  knee.  And  to  him,  also,  had  not  She  appeared 
who  saw,  hard  by  the  sea,  that  pious  old  buccaneer- 
Lothario,  so  much  tossed  about  on  land  and  upon  the 
deep? 

This  is  what  the  moderns  call  a  flirtation,  and  I  do 
not  doubt  that  it  was  called  a  flirtation  by  the  moderns 
around  these  two  young  people.  Somehow,  though, 
they  never  got  themselves  "  talked  about,"  not  even  by 
the  stranded  nomads  on  the  hotel  verandas.  Perhaps 
this  was  because  there  was  such  a  joyous  freshness  and 
purity  about  both  of  them  that  it  touched  the  hearts 
of  even  the  slander-steeped  old  dragons  who  rocked  all 
day  in  the  shade,  and  embroidered  tidies  and  talked  ill 
of  their  neighbors.  Perhaps  it  was  because  they  also 
had  that  about  them  which  the  mean  and  vulgar  mind 
always  sneers  at,  jeers  at,  affects  to  disbelieve  in,  always 
recognizes  and  fears,  —  the  courage  and  power  of  the 
finer  strain.  Envy  in  spit-curls  and  jealousy  in  a  false 
front  held  their  tongues,  may  be,  because,  though  they 
knew  that  they,  and  even  their  male  representatives, 
were  safe  from  any  violent  retort,  yet  they  recognized 


THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  97 

the  superior  force,  and  shrunk  from  it  as  the  cur  edges 
awny  from  the  quiescent  whip. 

There  is  a  great  difference,  too,  between  the  flirta- 
tions of  the  grandfatherless  and  the  flirtations  of  the 
grandfathered.  I  wish  you  to  understand  that  Mr. 
Walpole  and  Miss  Rittenhouse  did  not  sprawl  through 
their  flirtation,  nor  fall  into  that  slipshod  familiarity 
which  takes  all  the  delicate  beauty  of  dignity  and  mu- 
tual respect  out  of  such  a  friendship.  Horace  did  not 
bow  to  the  horizontal,  and  Miss  Rittenhouse  did  not 
make  a  cheese-cake  with  her  skirts  when  he  held  open 
the  door  for  her  to  pass  through ;  but  the  bond  of 
courtesy  between  them  was  no  less  sweetly  gracious  on 
her  side,  no  less  finely  reverential  on  his,  than  the 
taste  of  their  grandparents'  day  would  have  exacted,  — 
no  less  earnest,  I  think,  that  it  was  a  little  easier  than 
puff  and  periwig  might  have  made  it. 

Yet  I  also  think,  whatever  was  the  reason  that  made 
the  dragons  let  them  alone,  that  a  simple  mother  of  the 
plain,  old-fashioned  style  is  better  for  a  girl  of  Miss 
Rosamond  Rittenhouse's  age  than  any  such  precarious 
immunity  from  annoyance. 

Ah,  the  holiday  was  short !  The  summons  soon  came 
for  Horace.  They  went  to  the  old  church  together  for 
the  second  and  last  time,  and  he  stood  beside  her,  and 
they  held  the  hymn-book  between  them. 

Horace  could  not  rid  himself  of  the  idea  that  they 
had  stood  thus  through  every  Sunday  of  a  glorious 
summer.  The  week  before  he  had  sung  with  her.  He 
had  a  boyish  baritone  in  him,  one  of  those  which  may 
be  somewhat  extravagantly  characterized  as  consisting 


98  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

wholly  of  middle  register.  It  was  a  good  voice  for  the 
campus,  and,  combined  with  that  startling  clearness  of 
utterance  which  young  collegians  acquire,  had  been 
very  effective  in  the  little  church.  But  to-day  he  had 
no  heart  to  sing  "Byefield"  and  "Pleyel";  he  would 
rather  stand  beside  her  and  feel  his  heart  vibrate  to 
the  deep  lower  notes  of  her  tender  contralto,  and  his 
soul  rise  with  the  higher  tones  that  soared  upward 
from  her  pure  young  breast.  And  all  the  while  he  was 
making  that  act  of  devotion  which  —  "uttered  or  un- 
expressed"—  is,  indeed,  all  the  worship  earth  has  ever 
known. 

Once  she  looked  up  at  him  as  if  she  asked,  "Why 
don't  you  sing  ?  "  But  her  eyes  fell  quickly,  he  thought 
with  a  shade  of  displeasure  in  them  at  something  they 
had  seen  in  his.  Yet  as  he  watched  her  bent  head,  the 
cheek  near  him  warmed  with  a  slow,  soft  blush.  lie 
may  only  have  fancied  that  her  clear  voice  quivered  a 
little  with  a  tremolo  not  written  in  the  notes  at  the  top 
of  the  page. 

And  now  the  last  day  came.  When  the  work-a-day 
world  thrust  its  rough  shoulder  into  Arcadia,  and  the 
hours  of  the  idyll  were  numbered,  they  set  to  talking 
of  it  as  though  the  two  weeks  that  they  had  known 
each  other  were  some  sort  of  epitomized  summer.  Of 
course  they  were  to  meet  again,  in  New  York  or  in 
Philadelphia;  and  of  course  there  were  many  days 
of  summer  in  store  for  Miss  Rittenhouse  at  Sand  Hills, 
at  Newport,  and  at  Mount  Desert ;  but  Horace's  brief 
season  was  closed,  and  somehow  she  seemed  to  fall 
readily  into  his  way  of  looking  upon  it  as  a  golden 


THE  BED  SILK  HANDKEECHIEF.  99 

period  of  special  and  important  value,  their  joint  and 
exclusive  property  —  something  set  apart  from  all  the 
rest  of  her  holiday,  where  there  would  be  other  men 
and  other  good  times  and  no  Horace. 

It  was  done  with  much  banter  and  merriment ;  but 
through  it  all  Horace  listened  for  delicate  undertones 
that  should  echo  to  his  ear  the  earnestness  which  some- 
times rang  irrepressibly  in  his  own  speech.  In  that 
marvellous  instrument,  a  woman's  voice,  there  are 
strange  and  fine  possibilities  of  sound  that  may  be  the 
messengers  of  the  subtlest  intelligence  or  the  sweet 
falterings  of  imperfect  control.  So  Horace,  with  love 
to  construe  for  him,  did  not  suffer  too  cruelly  from 
disappointment. 

On  the  afternoon  of  that  last  day  they  sat  upon  the 
beach  and  saw  the  smoke  of  Dido's  funeral  pile  go  up, 
and  they  closed  the  dog's-eared  Virgil,  and,  looking 
seaward,  watched  the  black  cloud  from  a  coaling  steamer 
mar  the  blinding  blue  where  sea  and  sky  blent  at  the 
horizon ;  watched  it  grow  dull  and  faint,  and  fade  away, 
and  the  illumined  turquoise  reassert  itself. 

Then  he  was  for  a  farewell  walk,  and  she,  with  that 
bright  acquiescence  with  which  a  young  girl  can  make 
companionship  almost  perfect,  if  she  will,  accepted  it 
as  an  inspiration,  and  they  set  out.  They  visited  to-' 
gether  the  fishermen's  houses,  where  Horace  bade  good- 
bye to  mighty-fisted  friends,  who  stuck  their  thumbs 
inside  their  waistbands  and  hitched  their  trousers  half 
way  up  to  their  blue-shirted  arms,  and  said  to  him, 
"You  come  up  here  in  Orgust,  Mr.  Walpole  —  say 
'bout  the  fus't'  the  third  week  'n  Orgust,  V  we'll 


100  THE  KED  SILK  HANDKEECHIEF. 

give  yer  some  bloo-fishin'  't  y'  won't  need  t'  lie  about, 
neither."  They  all  liked  him,  and  heartily. 

Old  Rufe,  the  gruff  hermit  of  the  fishers,  who  lived 
a  half-mile  beyond  the  settlement,  flicked  his  shuttle 
through  the  net  he  was  mending,  and  did  not  look  up 
as  Horace  spoke  to  him. 

"  Goin'  ?  "  he  said ;  "  waal,  we  've  all  gotter  go  some 
time  oruther.  The'  aint  no  real  perma-nen-cy  on  this 
uth.  Goin'  ?  Waal,  I  'm  "  —  he  paused,  and  weighed 
the  shuttle  in  his  hand  as  though  to  aid  him  in  balanc- 
ing some  important  mental  process.  "  Sho !  I  'm  derned 
'f  I  ain't  sorry.  Squall  comiu'  up,  an'  don't  y'  make  no 
mistake,"  he  hurried  on,  not  to  be  further  committed 
to  unguarded  expression ;  "  better  look  sharp,  or  y'  '11 
git  a  wettin'." 

A  little  puff  of  gray  cloud,  scurrying  along  in  the 
south-east,  had  spread  over  half  the  sky,  and  now  came 
a  strong,  eddying  wind.  A  big  raindrop  made  a  dark 
spot  on  the  sand  before  them;  another  fell  on  Miss 
Rittenhouse's  cheek,  and  then,  with  a  vicious,  uncertain 
patter,  the  rain  began  to  come  down. 

"  We  '11  have  to  run  for  Poinsett's,"  said  Horace,  and 
stretched  out  his  hand.  She  took  it,  and  they  ran. 

Poinsett's  was  just  ahead  —  a  white  house  on  a  lift 
of  land,  close  back  of  the  shore-line,  with  a  long  garden 
stretching  down  in  front,  and  two  or  three  poplar  trees. 
The  wind  was  turning  up  the  pale  under-sides  of  grass- 
blade  and  flower  leaf,  and  whipping  the  shivering 
poplars  silver  white.  Cap'n  Poinsett,  late  of  Glouces- 
ter, Massachusetts,  was  tacking  down  the  path  in  his 
pea-jacket,  with  his  brass  telescope  tucked  under  his 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  101 

arm.  He  was  making  for  the  little  white  summer- 
house  that  overhung  the  shore ;  but  he  stopped  to 
admire  the  two  young  people  dashing  up  the  slope 
toward  him,  for  the  girl  ran  with  a  splendid  free  stride 
that  kept  her  well  abreast  of  Horace's  athletic  lope. 

"  Come  in,"  he  said,  opening  the  gate,  and  smiling 
on  the  two  young  faces,  flushed  and  wet ;  "  come  right 
in  out  o'  the  rain.  Be'n  runnin',  ain't  ye?  Go  right 
int'  the  house.  Mother !  "  he  called,  "  here 's  Mr.  Wai- 
pole  V  his  young  lady.  You'll  hev  to  ex-cuse  me; 
I'm  a-goin'  down  t'  my  observatory.  I  carn't  foller 
the  sea  no  longer  myself,  but  I  can  look  at  them  that 
dooz.  There 's  my  old  woman  —  go  right  in." 

He  waddled  off,  leaving  both  of  them  redder  than 
their  run  accounted  for,  and  Mrs.  Poinsett  met  them  at 
the  door,  her  arms  folded  in  her  apron. 

"  Walk  right  in,"  she  greeted  them ;  "  the  cap'n  he 
mus'  always  go  down  t'  his  observatory,  's  he  calls  it, 
'ri'  gape  through  thet  old  telescope  of  hisn,  fust  thing 
the  's  a  squall  —  jus's  if  he  thought  he  was  skipper  of 
all  Long  Island.  But  you  come  right  int'  the  settin'- 
room  'n'  make  yourselves  to  home.  Dear  me  suz! 
'f  I'd  'a'  thought  I'd  'a'  had  company  I'd  'a'  tidied 
things  up.  I'm  jus'  's  busy  as  busy,  gettin'  supper 
ready;  but  don't  you  mind  me  —  jus'  you  make  your- 
selves to  home,"  and  she  drifted  chattering  away,  and 
they  heard  her  in  the  distant  kitchen  amiably  nagging 
the  hired  girl. 

It  was  an  old-time,  low-ceiled  room,  neat  with  New 
England  neatness.  The  windows  had  many  panes  of 
green  flint  glass,  through  which  they  saw  the  darkening 


102  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

storm  swirl  over  the  ocean  and  ravage  the  flower-beds 
near  by. 

And  when  they  had  made  an  end  of  watching  Cap'n 
Poinsett  in  his  little  summer-house,  shifting  his  long 
glass  to  follow  each  scudding  sail  far  out  in  the  dark- 
ness ;  and  when  they  had  looked  at  the  relics  of  Cap'n 
Poinsett' s  voyages  to  the  Orient  and  the  Arctic,  and 
at  the  cigar-boxes  plastered  with  little  shells,  and  at 
the  wax  fruit,  and  at  the  family  trousers  and  bonnets 
in  the  album,  there  was  nothing  left  but  that  Miss 
Rittenhouse  should  sit  down  at  the  old  piano,  bought 
for  Amanda  Jane  in  the  last  year  of  the  war,  and  bring 
forth  rusty  melody  from  the  yellowed  keys. 

"  What  a  lovely  voice  she  has  !  "  thought  Horace  as 
she  sang.  No  doubt  he  was  right.  I  would  take  his 
word  against  that  of  a  professor  of  music,  who  would 
have  told  you  that  it  was  a  nice  voice  for  a  girl,  and 
that  the  young  woman  had  more  natural  dramatic 
expression  than  technical  training. 

They  fished  out  Amanda  Jane's  music-books,  and 
went  through  "  Juanita,"  and  the  "Evergreen  Waltz," 
and  "  Beautiful  Isle  of  the  Sea ; "  and,  finding  a  lot  of 
war  songs,  severally  and  jointly  announced  their  deter- 
mination to  invade  Dixie  Land,  and  to  annihilate  Rebel 
Hordes ;  and  adjured  each  other  to  remember  Sumter 
and  Baltimore,  and  many  other  matters  that  could  have 
made  but  slight  impression  on  their  young  minds  twenty 
odd  years  before.  Mrs.  Poinsett,  in  the  kitchen,  stopped 
nngo-Jng  her  aid,  and  thought  of  young  John  Tarbox  Poin- 
sett's name  on  a  great  sheet  of  paper  in  the  Gloucester 
post-office,  one  morning  at  the  end  of  April,  1862,  when 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  103 

the  news  came  up  that  Farragut  had  passed  the 
forts. 

The  squall  was  going  over,  much  as  it  had  come, 
only  no  one  paid  attention  to  its  movements  now,  for 
the  sun  was  out,  trying  to  straighten  up  the  crushed 
grass  and  flowers,  and  to  brighten  the  hurrying 
waves,  and  to  soothe  the  rustling  agitation  of  the 
poplars. 

They  must  have  one  more  song.  Miss  Rittenhouse 
chose  "  Jeannette  and  Jeannot,"  and  when  she  looked 
back  at  him  with  a  delicious  coy  mischief  in  her  eyes, 
and  sang,  — 

"  There  is  no  one  left  to  love  me  now, 
And  you  too  may  forget "  — 

Horace  felt  something  flaming  in  his  cheeks  and  chok- 
ing in  his  breast,  and  it  was  hard  for  him  to  keep  from 
snatching  those  hands  from  the  keys  and  telling  her 
she  knew  better. 

But  he  was  man  enough  not  to.  He  controlled  him- 
self, and  made  himself  very  pleasant  to  Mrs.  Poinsett 
about  not  staying  to  supper,  and  they  set  out  for  the 
hotel. 

The  air  was  cool  and  damp  after  the  rain. 

"  You  've  been  singing,"  said  Horace,  "  and  you  will 
catch  cold  in  this  air,  and  lose  your  voice.  You  must 
tie  this  handkerchief  around  your  throat." 

She  took  his  blue  silk  handkerchief  and  tied  it  around 
her  throat,  and  wore  it  until  just  as  they  were  turning 
away  from  the  shore,  when  she  took  it  off  to  return  to 
him ;  and  the  last  gust  of  wind  that  blew  that  after- 


104  THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

noon  whisked  it  out  of  her  hand,  and  sent  it  whirling 
a  hundred  yards  out  to  sea. 

"Now,  don't  say  a  word,"  said  Horace  ;  "it  isn't  of 
the  slightest  consequence." 

But  he  looked  very  gloomy  over  it.  He  had  made 
up  his  mind  that  that  silk  handkerchief  should  be  the 
silk  handkerchief  of  all  the  world  to  him,  from  that 
time  on. 

It  was  one  month  later  that  Mr.  H.  K.  "VYalpole 
received,  in  care  of  Messrs.  Weeden,  Snowden  &  Gil- 
feather,  an  envelope  postmarked  Newport,  containing 
a  red  silk  handkerchief.  His  initials  were  neatly  — 
nay,  beautifully,  exquisitely  —  stitched  in  one  corner. 
But  there  was  absolutely  nothing  about  the  package  to 
show  who  sent  it,  and  Horace  sorrowed  over  this.  Not 
that  he  was  in  any  doubt ;  but  he  felt  that  it  meant  to 
say  that  he  must  not  acknowledge  it ;  and,  loyally,  he 
did  not. 

And  he  soon  got  over  that  grief.  The  lost  handker- 
chief, whose  origin  was  base  and  common,  like  other 
handkerchiefs,  and  whose  sanctity  was  purely  acciden- 
tal —  what  was  it  to  this  handkerchief,  worked  by  her 
for  him? 

This  became  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  the  in- 
ward and  spiritual  grace  that  had  changed  the  boy's 
whole  life.  Before  this  he  had  had  purposes  and  ambi- 
tions. He  had  meant  to  take  care  of  his  mother,  to  do 
well  in  the  world,  and  to  restore,  if  he  could,  the  honor 
and  glory  of  the  home  his  father  had  left  him.  Here 
were  duty,  selfishness,  and  an  innocent  vanity.  But 


THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.          105 

now  he  had  an  end  in  life,  so  high  that  the  very  seek- 
ing of  it  was  a  religion.  Every  thought  of  self  was 
flooded  out  of  him,  and  what  he  sought  he  sought  in  a 
purer  and  nobler  spirit  than  ever  before. 

Is  it  not  strange  ?  A  couple  of  weeks  at  the  sea-side, 
a  few  evenings  under  the  brooding  darkness  of  hotel 
verandas,  the  going  to  and  fro  of  a  girl  with  a  sweet 
face,  and  this  ineradicable  change  is  made  in  the  mind 
of  a  man  who  has  forty  or  fifty  years  before  him  where- 
in to  fight  the  world,  to  find  his  place,  to  become  a  fac- 
tor for  good  or  evil. 

And  here  we  have  Horace,  with  his  heart  full  of  love 
and  his  head  full  of  dreams,  mooning  over  a  silk  hand- 
kerchief, in  open  court. 

Not  that  he  often  took  such  chances.  The  daws  of 
humor  peck  at  the  heart  worn  on  the  sleeve ;  and  quite 
rightly,  for  that  is  no  place  for  a  heart.  But  in  the 
privacy  of  his  modest  lodging-house  room  he  took  the 
handkerchief  out,  and  spread  it  before  him,  and  looked 
at  it,  and  kissed  it  sometimes,  I  suppose,  —  it  seems 
ungentle  to  pry  thus  into  the  sacredness  of  a  boy's 
love,  —  and,  certainly,  kept  it  in  sight,  working,  study- 
ing, or  thinking. 

With  all  this,  the  handkerchief  became  somewhat 
rumpled,  and  at  last  Horace  felt  that  it  must  be 
brought  back  to  the  condition  of  neatness  in  which  he 
first  knew  it.  So,  on  a  Tuesday,  he  descended  to  the 
kitchen  of  his  lodging-house,  and  asked  for  a  flat-iron. 
His  good  landlady^  at  the  head  of  an  industrious,  plump- 
armed  Irish  brigade,  all  vigorously  smoothing  out  towels, 
stared  at  him  in  surprise. 


106  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

"  If  there 's  anything  you  want  ironed,  Mr.  Walpole, 
bring  it  down  here,  and  I  '11  be  more  ''n  glad  to  iron  it 
for  you." 

Horace  grew  red,  and  found  his  voice  going  entirely 
out  of  his  control,  as  he  tried  to  explain  that  it  was  n't 
for  that  —  it  was  n't  for  ironing  clothes  —  he  was  sure 
nobody  could  do  it  but  himself. 

"  Do  you  want  it  hot  or  cold  ?  "  asked  Mrs.  Wilkins, 
puzzled. 

"Cold!"  said  Horace  desperately.  And  he  got  it 
cold,  and  had  to  heat  it  at  his  own  fire  to  perform  his 
labor  of  love. 

That  was  of  a  piece  with  many  things  he  did.  Of  a 
piece,  for  instance,  with  his  looking  in  at  the  milliners' 
windows  and  trying  to  think  which  bonnet  would  best 
become  her  —  and  then  taking  himself  severely  to  task 
for  dreaming  that  she  would  wear  a  ready-made  bonnet. 
Of  a  piece  with  his  buying  two  seats  for  the  theatre, 
and  going  alone  and  fancying  her  next  him,  and  glanc- 
ing furtively  at  the  empty  place  at  the  points  where 
he  thought  she  would  be  amused,  or  pleased,  or  moved. 

What  a  fool  he  was !  Yes,  my  friend,  and  so  are 
you  and  I.  And  remember  that  this  boy's  foolishness 
did  not  keep  him  tossing,  stark  awake,  through  ghastly 
nights ;  did  not  start  him  up  in  the  morning  with  a  hot 
throat  and  an  unrested  brain ;  did  not  send  him  down 
to  his  day's  work  with  the  haunting,  clutching,  lurking 
fear  that  springs  forward  at  every  stroke  of  the  clock, 
at  every  opening  of  the  door.  Perhaps  you  and  I  have 
known  folly  worse  than  his. 

Through    all    the   winter  —  the    red    handkerchief 


THE  EED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF:          107 

cheered  the  hideous  first  Monday  in  October,  and  the 
Christmas  holidays,  when  business  kept  him  from  go- 
ing home  to  Montevista  —  he  heard  little  or  nothing 
of  her.  His  friends  in  the  city,  or  rather  his  father's 
friends,  were  all  ingrained  New  Yorkers,  dating  from 
the  provincial  period,  who  knew  not  Philadelphia ;  and 
it  was  only  from  an  occasional  newspaper  paragraph 
that  he  learned  that  Judge  Rittenhouse  and  his  daugh- 
ter were  travelling  through  the  South,  for  the  Judge's 
health.  Of  course,  he  had  a  standing  invitation  to  call 
on  them  whenever  he  should  find  himself  in  Philadel- 
phia; but  they  never  came  nearer  Philadelphia  than 
Washington,  and  so  he  never  found  himself  in  Phila- 
delphia. He  was  not  so  sorry  for  this  as  you  might 
think  a  lover  should  be.  He  knew  that,  with  a  little 
patience,  he  might  present  himself  to  Judge  Ritten- 
house as  something  more  than  a  lawyer's  managing 
clerk. 

For,  meanwhile,  good  news  had  come  from  home,  and 
things  were  going  well  with  him.  Mineral  springs  had 
been  discovered  at  Aristotle  —  mineral  springs  may  be 
discovered  anywhere  in  north  New  York,  if  you  only 
try ;  though  it  is  sometimes  difficult  to  fit  them  with 
the  proper  Indian  legends.  The  name  of  .the  town  had 
been  changed  to  Avoca,  and  there  was  already  an  Avoca 
Improvement  Company,  building  a  big  hotel,  advertis- 
ing right  and  left,  and  prophesying  that  the  day  of 
-Saratoga  and  Sharon  and  Richfield  was  ended.  So 
the  barrens  between  Montevista  and  Aristotle,  skirting 
the  railroad,  suddenly  took  on  a  value.  Hitherto  they 
had  been  unsalable,  except  for  taxes.  For  the  most 


108  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

part  they  were  an  adjunct  of  the  estate  of  Montevista; 
and  in  February  Horace  went  up  to  St.  Lawrence 
County  and  began  the  series  of  sales  that  was  to  realize 
his  father's  most  hopeless  dream,  and  clear  Montevista 
of  all  incumbrances. 

How  pat  it  all  came,  he  thought,  as,  on  his  return 
trip,  the  train  carried  him  past  the  little  old  station,  with 
its  glaring  new  sign,  AVOCA,  just  beyond  the  broad 
stretch  of  "  Squire  Walpole's  bad  land,"  now  sprouting 
with  the  surveyors'  stakes.  After  all  was  paid  off  on 
the  old  home,  there  would  be  enough  left  to  enable 
him  to  buy  out  Haskins,  who  had  openly  expressed  his 
desire  to  get  into  a  "  live  firm,"  and  who  was  willing 
to  part  with  his  interest  for  a  reasonable  sum  down, 
backed  up  by  a  succession  of  easy  installments.  And 
Judge  Weeden  had  intimated,  as  clearly  as  dignity 
would  permit,  his  anxiety  that  Horace  should  seize  the 
opportunity. 

Winter  was  still  on  the  Jersey  flats  on  the  last  day 
of  March ;  but  Horace,  waiting  at  a  little  "flag  station," 
found  the  air  full  of  crude  prophecies  of  spring.  He 
had  been  searching  titles  all  day,  in  a  close  and  gloomy 
little  town-hall,  and  he  was  glad  to  be  out-of-doors 
again,  and  to  think  that  he  should  be  back  in  New  York 
by  dinner  time,  for  it  was  past  five  o'clock. 

But  a  talk  with  the  station-master  made  the  prospect 
less  bright.  No  train  would  stop  there  until  seven. 

Was  there  no  other  way  of  getting  home?  The 
lonely  guardian  of  the  Gothic  shanty  thought  it  over, 
and  found  that  there  was  a  way.  He  talked  of  the 


THE  EED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  109 

trains  as  though  they  were  whimsical  creatures  under 
his  charge. 

"  The 's  a  freight  comin'  down  right  now,"  he  said, 
meditatively,  "  but  I  can't  do  nothin'  with  her.  She 's 
gotter  get  along  mighty  lively  to  keep  ahead  of  the 
Express  from  Philadelphia  till  she  gets  to  the  junction 
and  goes  on  a  siding  till  the  Express  goes  past.  And 
as  to  the  Express  —  why,  I  could  n't  no  more  flag  her 
than  if  she  was  a  cyclone.  But  I  tell  you  what  you 
do.  You  walk  right  down  to  the  junction  —  'bout  a 
mile  'n'  a  half  down  —  and  see  if  you  can't  do  some- 
thing with  number  ninety-seven  on  the  other  road. 
You  see,  she  goes  on  to  New  York  on  our  tracks,  and 
she  mostly 's  in  the  habit  of  waiting  at  the  junction 
'bout  —  say  five  to  seven  minutes,  to  give  that  Express 
from  Philadelphia  a  fair  start.  That  Express  has  it 
pretty  much  her  own  way  on  this  road,  for  a  fact. 
You  go  down  to  the  junction  —  walk  right  down  the 
line — and  you'll  get  ninety-seven  —  there  ain't  no  kind 
of  doubt  about  it.  You  can't  see  the  junction ;  but 
it 's  just  half  a  mile  beyont  that  curve  down  there." 

So  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  but  to  walk  to  the 
junction.  The  railroad  ran  a  straight,  steadily  descend- 
ing mile  on  the  top  of  a  high  embankment,  and  then 
suddenly  turned  out  of  sight  around  a  ragged  elevation. 
Horace  buttoned  his  light  overcoat,  and  tramped  down 
the  cinder-path  between  the  tracks. 

Yes,  spring  was  coming.  The  setting  sun  beamed  a 
soft,  hopeful  red  over  the  shoulder  of  the  ragged  ele- 
vation ;  light,  drifting  mists  rose  from  the  marsh  land 
below  him,  and  the  last  low  rays  struck  a  vapory  opal 


HO  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

through  them.  There  was  a  warm,  almost  prismatic 
purple  hanging  over  the  outlines  of  the  hills  and  woods 
far  to  the  east.  The  damp  air,  even,  had  a  certain  lan- 
guid warmth  in  it ;  and  though  there  was  snow  in  the 
little  hollows  at  the  foot  of  the  embankment,  and  bits 
of  thin  whitish  ice  were  in  the  swampy  pools,  it  was  clear 
enough  to  Horace  that  spring  was  at  hand.  Spring  — 
and  then  summer;  and,  by  the  sea  or  in  the  mountains, 
the  junior  partner  of  the  house  of  Weeden,  Snowden 
&  Gilfeather  might  hope  to  meet  once  more  with  Judge 
Rittenhouse's  daughter. 

The  noise  of  the  freight-train,  far  up  the  track  behind 
him,  disturbed  Horace's  springtime  revery.  A  fore- 
thought of  rocking  gravel-cars  scattering  the  overplus 
of  their  load  by  the  way,  and  of  reeking  oil-tanks, 
filling  the  air  with  petroleum,  sent  him  down  the 
embankment  to  wait  until  the  way  was  once  more 
clear. 

The  freight-train  went  by  and  above  him  with  a  long- 
drawn  roar  and  clatter,  and  with  a  sudden  fierce  crash, 
and  the  shriek  of  iron  upon  iron,  at  the  end,  and  the 
last  truck  of  the  last  car  came  down  the  embankment, 
tearing  a  gully  behind  it,  and  ploughed  a  grave  for 
itself  in  the  marsh  ten  yards  ahead  of  him. 

And,  looking  up,  he  saw  a  twisted  rail  raising  its 
head  like  a  shining  serpent  above  the  dim  line  of  the 
embankment.  A  furious  rush  took  Horace  up  the  slope. 
A  quarter  of  a  mile  below  him  the  freight-train  was 
slipping  around  the  curve.  The  fallen  end  of  the  last 
car  was  beating  and  tearing  the  ties.  He  heard  the 
shrill  creak  of  the  brakes  and  the  frightened  whistle  of 


THE  EED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

the  locomotive.  But  the  grade  was  steep,  and  it  was 
hard  to  stop.  And  if  they  did  stop  they  were  half  a 
mile  from  the  junction  —  half  a  mile  from  their  only 
chance  of  warning  the  Express. 

Horace  heard  in  his  ears  the  station-master's  words : 
"  She  's  gotter  get  along  mighty  lively  to  keep  ahead 
of  the  Express  from  Philadelphia." 

"Mighty  lively  —  mighty  Jively," —  the  words  rang 
through  his  brain  to  the  time  of  thundering  car-wheels. 

He  knew  where  he  stood.  He  had  made,  three- 
quarters  of  the  straight  mile.  He  was  three-quarters 
of  a  mile,  then,  from  the  little  station.  His  overcoat 
was  off  in  half  a  second.  Many  a  time  had  he  stripped, 
with  that  familiar  movement,  to  trunks  and  sleeveless 
shirt,  to  run  his  mile  or  his  half-mile ;  but  never  had 
such  a  thirteen  hundred  yards  lain  before  him,  up  such 
a  track,  to  be  run  for  such  an  end. 

The  sweat  was  on  his  forehead  before  his  right  foot 
passed  his  left. 

His  young  muscles  strove  and  stretched.  His  feet 
struck  the  soft,  unstable  path  of  cinders  with  strong, 
regular  blows.  His  tense  forearms  strained  upward 
from  his  sides.  Under  his  chest,  thrown  outward  from 
his  shoulders,  was  a  constricting  line  of  pain.  His  wet 
face  burnt.  There  was  a  fire  in  his  temples,  and  at 
every  breath  of  his  swelling  nostrils  something  throbbed 
behind  his  eyes.  The  eyes  saw  nothing  but  a  dancing 
dazzle  of  tracks  and  ties,  through  a  burning  blindness. 
And  his  feet  beat,  beat,  beat  till  the  shifting  cinders 
seemed  afire  under  him. 

That  is  what  this  human  machine  was  doing,  going 


112  THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

at  this  extreme  pressure ;  every  muscle,  every  breath, 
every  drop  of  blood  alive  with  the  pain  of  this  intense 
stress.  Looking  at  it  you  would  have  said,  "A  fleet, 
light-limbed  young  man,  with  a  stride  like  a  deer, 
throwing  the  yards  under  him  in  fine  style."  All  we 
know  about  the  running  other  folks  are  making  in  this 
world ! 

Half-way  up  the  track  Horace  stopped  short,  panting 
hard,  his  heart  beating  like  a  crazy  drum,  a  nervous 
shiver  on  him.  Up  the  track  there  was  a  dull  whin-, 
and  he  saw  the  engine  of  the  express-train  slipping 
down  on  him  —  past  the  station  already. 

The  white  mists  from  the  marshes  had  risen  up  over 
the  embankment.  The  last  rays  of  the  sunset  shot 
through  them,  brilliant  and  blinding.  Horace  could 
see  the  engine ;  but  would  the  engineer  see  him,  waving 
his  hands  in  futile  gestures,  in  time  to  stop  on  that 
slippery,  sharp  grade?  And  of  what  use  would  be  his 
choking  voice  when  the  dull  whirr  should  turn  into  a 
roar  ?  For  a  moment,  in  his  hopeless  disappointment, 
Horace  felt  like  throwing  himself  in  the  path  of  the 
train,  like  a  wasted  thing  that  had  no  right  to  live, 
after  so  great  a  failure. 

As  will  happen  to  those  wrho  are  stunned  by  a  great 
blow,  his  mind  ran  back  mechanically  to  the  things 
nearest  his  heart,  and  in  a  flash  he  went  through  the 
two  weeks  of  his  life.  And  then,  before  the  thought 
had  time  to  form  itself,  he  had  brought  a  red  silk 
handkerchief  from  his  breast,  and  was  waving  it  with 
both  hands,  a  fiery  crimson  in  the  opal  mist. 

Seen.     The  whistle  shrieked ;  there  was  a  groan  and 


THE  RED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF.  H3 

a  creak  of  brakes,  the  thunder  of  the  train  resolved 
itself  into  various  rattling  noises,  the  engine  slipped 
slowly  by  him,  and  slowed  down,  and  he  stood  by  the 
platform  of  the  last  car  as  the  express  stopped. 

There  was  a  crowd  around  Horace  in  an  instant. 
His  head  was  whirling,  but  in  a  dull  way  he  said  what 
he  had  to  say.  An  officious  passenger,  who  would 
have  explained  it  all  to  the  conductor  if  the  conductor 
had  waited,  took  the  deliverer  in  his  arms  —  for  the  boy 
was  near  fainting  —  and  enlightened  the  passengers 
who  flocked  around. 

Horace  hung  in  his  embrace,  too  deadly  weak  even 
to  accept  the  offer  of  one  of  the  dozen  flasks  that  were 
thrust  at  him.  Nothing  was  very  clear  in  his  mind ;  as 
far  as  he  could  make  out,  his  most  distinct  impression 
was  of  a  broad,  flat  beach,  a  blue  sea  and  a  blue  sky, 
a  black  steamer  making  a  black  trail  of  smoke  across 
them,  and  a  voice  soft  as  an  angel's  reading  Latin  close 
by  him.  Then  he  opened  his  eyes  and  saw  the  woman 
of  the  voice  standing  in  front  of  him. 

"  Oh,  Richard,"  he  heard  her  say, "  it 's  Mr.  Walpole ! " 

Horace  struggled  to  his  feet.  She  took  his  hand  in 
both  of  hers  and  drew  closer  to  him ;  the  crowd  falling 
back  a  little,  seeing  that  they  were  friends. 

"What  can  I  ever  say  to  thank  you?"  she  said. 
"  You  have  saved  our  lives.  It 's  not  so  much  for 
myself,  but "  —  she  blushed  faintly,  and  Horace  felt 
her  hands  tremble  on  his ;  "  Richard  —  my  husband 
—  we  were  married  to-day,  you  know  —  and  "  — 

Something  heavy  and  black  came  between  Horace 
and  life  for  a  few  minutes.  When  it  passed  away  he 


114  THE  BED  SILK  HANDKERCHIEF. 

straightened  himself  up  out  of  the  arms  of  the  officious 
passenger  and  stared  about  him,  mind  and  memory 
coming  back  to  him.  The  people  around  looked  at 
him  oddly.  A  brakeman  brought  him  his  overcoat, 
and  he  stood  unresistingly  while  it  was  slipped  on 
him.  Then  he  turned  away  and  started  down  the 
embankment. 

"  Hold  on  !  "  cried  the  officious  passenger  excitedly ; 
"  we  're  getting  up  a  testimonial  "  — 

Horace  never  heard  it.  How  he  found  his  way  he 
never  cared  to  recall ;  but  the  gas  was  dim  in  the  city 
streets,  and  the  fire  was  out  in  his  little  lodging-house 
room  when  he  came  home ;  and  his  narrow  white  bed 
knows  all  that  I  cannot  tell  of  his  tears  and  his  broken 
dreams. 

"Walpole,"  said  Judge  Weeden,  as  he  stood  be- 
tween the  yawning  doors  of  the  office  safe,  one  morning 
in  June,  "  I  observe  that  you  have  a  private  package 
here.  Why  do  you  not  use  the  drawer  of  our  —  our 
late  associate,  Mr.  Haskins?  It  is  yours  now,  you 
know.  I'll  put  your  package  in  it."  He  poised  the 
heavily  sealed  envelope  in  his  hand.  "Very  odd 
feeling  package,  Walpole.  Remarkably  soft ! "  he  said. 
"  Well,  bless  me,  it 's  none  of  my  business,  of  course. 
Horace,  how  much  you  look  like  your  father !  " 


THE  SEVEN   CONVERSATIONS 

OF 

DEAR  JONES  AND  BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER. 

BY  BRANDER  MATTHEWS  AND  H.  C.  BUNNER. 


I. 

THE   FIRST   CONVERSATION. 

TUESDAY,  February  14,  1882. 

THE  band  was  invisible,  but,  unfortunately,  not  in- 
audible. It  was  in  the  butler's  pantry,  playing 
Waldteufel's  latest  waltz,  "Siissen  Veilchen."  The 
English  butler,  who  resented  the  intrusion  of  the  Ger- 
man leader,  was  introducing  an  obbligato  unforeseen  by 
the  composer.  This  was  the  second  of  Mrs.  Martin's 
charming  Tuesdays  in  February.  Mrs.  Martin  herself, 
fondly  and  familiarly  known  as  the  "  Duchess  of  Wash- 
ington Square,"  stopped  a  young  man  as  he  was  mak- 
ing a  desperate  rush  for  his  overcoat,  then  reposing 
under  three  strata  of  late  comers'  outer  garments  in  the 
second-floor  back,  and  said  to  him : 

"O  Dear  Jones" — the  Duchess  always  called  him 
Dear  Jones  —  "I  want  to  introduce  you  to  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer —  Phyllis  Van  Rensselaer,  you  know  —  they 
always  called  her  Baby  Van  Rensselaer,  though  I  'm 
sure  I  don't  know  why  —  Phyllis  is  such  a  lovely  name 

115 


116  DEAR  JONES  AND 

—  don't  you  think  so  ?  —  and  your  grandfathers  were 
such  friends."     [Dear  Jones  executed  an  ex  post  facto 
condemnation  upon  his  ancestor  and  hers.]    "  You  know 
Major  Van  Rensselaer  was  your  grandfather's  partner 
until  that  unfortunate  affair  of  the  embezzlement —  O 
Baby  dear  —  there  you  are,  are  you  ?    I  was  wondering 
where  you  were  all  this  time.     This  is  Mr.  Jones,  dear, 
one  of  your  grandfather's  most  intimate  friends.     Oh, 
I  don't  mean  that,  of  course  —  you  know  what  I  mean 

—  and  I  do  so  want  you  two  to  know  each  other." 
DEAR  JONES  :  What  in  the  name  of  the  prophet  does 

the  Duchess  mean  by  introducing  me  to  More  Girls  ? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  I  do  wish  the  Duchess 
would  n't  insist  on  tiring  me  out  with  slim  young  men ; 
I  never  can  tell  one  from  the  other. 

These  remarks  were  not  uttered.     They  remained  in 

the  privacy  of  the  inner  consciousness.     What  they 

really  said  was : 

DEAR  JONES  [inarticulately]  :  Miss  Van  Rensselaer. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  {inattentively] :  Yes,  it  is 
rather  warm.  .  .  . 

And  they  drifted  apart  in  the  crowd. 


II. 

THE    SECOND   CONVERSATION. 

THURSDAY,  April  13,  1882. 

Of  course,  Dear  Jones  was  the  last  to  arrive  of  the 
favored  children  of  the  world  who  had  been  invited  to 
dine  at  Judge  Gillespie's  "to  meet  the  Lord  Bishop 


BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER.  H7 

of  Barset,"  just  imported  from  England  per  steamer 
"  Servia."  In  the  hall,  the  butler,  whose  appearance 
was  even  more  dignified  and  clerical  than  the  Bishop's, 
handed  Dear  Jones  an  unsealed  communication. 

DEAR  JONES  [examining  the  contents'] :  Who  in 
Heligoland  is  Miss  Van  Rensselaer? 

As  Dear  Jones  entered,  Mrs.  Sutton  —  the  Judge's 
daughter,  you  know  —  married  Charley  Sutton,  who 
came  from  San  Francisco  —  Mrs.  Sutton  gave  a  little 
sigh  of  relief,  nodded  to  the  butler,  and  said  in  per- 
functory answer  to  the  apologies  Dear  Jones  had  not 
made:  "Oh,  no;  you're  not  a  bit  late  —  we  haven't 
been  waiting  for  you  at  all  —  the  Bishop  has  only  just 
come" — (confidentially  in  his  ear)  "I've  given  you  a 
charming  girl."  [Dear  Jones  shuddered :  he  knew  what 
that  generally  meant.]  "  You  know  Baby  Van  Rens- 
selaer ?  Of  course  —  there  she  is  —  now,  go  —  and  do 
be  bright  and  clever."  And  after  thus  handicapping 
an  inoffensive  young  man,  she^took  the  Bishop's  arm  in 
the  middle  of  his  ante-prandial  anecdote. 

DEAR  JONES  [marching  to  his  fate} :  It 's  the 
Duchess's  girl  again,  by  Jove!  It's  lucky  Uncle 
Larry  is  going  to  take  me  off  at  ten  sharp. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAEE  :  Why,  it 's  that  Mr. 
Jones ! 

These  remarks  were  not  uttered.  They  remained  in 
the  privacy  of  the  inner  consciousness.  What  they 
really  said  was : 

DEAR  JONES  [with  audacious  hypocrisy]  :  Of  course, 
you  don't  remember  me,  Miss  Van  Rensselaer.  .  .  . 


118  DEAR  JONES  AND 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [trumping  his  card  un- 
abashed^ :  I  really  don't  quite.  .  .  . 

DEAR  JONES  [offering  his  arm~]  :  Er  .  .  .  don't  you 
remember  the  Duch  —  Mrs.  Martin's  —  that  hideously 
rainy  afternoon,  just  before  Lent? 

Here  there  was  a  gap  in  the  conversation  as  the  pro- 
cession took  up  its  line  of  march,  and  moved  through 
a  narrow  passage  into  the  dining-room. 

DEAR  JONES  [making  a  brave  dash  at  the  "  bright 
and  clever "]  :  Well,  in  my  house,  the  door  into  the 
dining-room  shall  be  eighteen  feet  wide. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [literal,  stern,  and  cold']  : 
Are  you  building  a  house,  Mr.  Jones? 

DEAR  JONES  [calmly']  :  I  am  at  present,  Miss  Van 
Rensselaer,  building  —  let  me  see  —  four  —  five  — 
seven  houses. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [coldly  and  suspecting 
flippancy^  :  Ah,  indeed  —  are  you  a  billionaire  ? 

DEAR  JONES:  No;  I'm  an  architect. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [in  confusion]  :  Oh,  I  'm 
sure  I  beg  your  pardon  — 

DEAR  JONES  :  You  need  n't.  I  should  n't  be  at  all 
ashamed  to  be  a  billionaire. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Oh,  of  course  not  —  I 
did  n't  mean  that  — 

DEAR  JONES  [unguardedly"]  :  Well,  if  it  comes  to 
that;  I'm  not  ashamed  of  my  architecture  either. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [calmly']  :  Indeed?  I 
have  never  seen  any  of  it. 

DEAR  JONES  :  You  sit  here,  I  think.  This  is  your 
card  with  the  little  lady  in  the  powdered  wig  —  a 
cherubic  Madame  de  Stael. 


BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER.  H9 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  And  this  is  yours  with  a 
Cupid  in  a  basket  —  a  nineteenth  century  Moses. 

DEAR  JONES  [taking  his  seat  beside  her~\  :  Talking 
about  dinner  cards  —  and  billionaires,  you  heard  of 
that  dinner  old  Greasers  gave  to  fifty-two  of  his  friends 
of  the  new  dispensation.  I  believe  there  was  one  poor 
fellow  there  whose  wife  had  only  half  a  peck  of  dia- 
monds. He  assembled  his  hordes  in  the  picture-gallery, 
as  the  dining-room  was  n't  large  enough  —  you  see,  I 
did  n't  build  his  house.  And  to  carry  out  the  novelty 
of  the  thing,  his  dinner  cards  were  — 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Playing-cards  ? 

DEAR  JONES:  Just  so  —  but  they  were  painted, 
"  hand-painted  "  on  satin. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  And  what  did  he  take 
for  himself  —  the  king  of  diamonds? 

DEAR  JONES  :  For  the  only  time  in  his  life  he  forgot 
himself  —  and  he  had  to  put  up  with  the  Joker. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  What  sort  of  people  were 
there? 

DEAR  JONES  :  Very  good  sort,  indeed.  There  was  a 
M.  Meissonnier  and  M.  Gerome  and  a  M.  Corot  —  be- 
sides the  man  Who  sold  them  to  him. 

Everybody  knows  how  a  conversation  runs  on  at 
dinner,  when  it  does  run  on.  On  this  occasion  it  ran 
on  for  seventy  minutes  and  six  courses.  Dear  Jones 
and  Baby  Van  Rensselaer  discussed  the  usual  topics 
and  the  usual  bill-of-fare.  Then,  as  the  butler  served 
the  bombe  glacee  d  la  Demidoff — 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Oh,  I  'm  so  glad  you 
liked  her.  We  were  at  school  together,  you  know, 


120  DEAR   JONES  AND 

and  she  was  with  us  when  we  went  up  the  Saguenay 
last  August. 

DEAR  JONES  :  Why,  I  went  up  the  Saguenay  last 
August. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAEE  [earnestly"] :  And  we  didn't 
meet  ?  How  miserably  absurd ! 

DEAR  JONES  :  I  '11  tell  you  whom  I  did  meet  —  your 
father's  partner,  Mr.  Hitchcock.  He  had  his  daughter 
with  him,  too  —  a  very  bright  girl.  You  know  her,  of 
course. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [coldly~\  :  I  have  heard  she 
is  quite  clever.  [A  pause.]  The  Hitchcocks  —  I 
believe  —  go  more  in  the  —  New  England  set.  I  have 
met  her  brother,  though  —  Mr.  Mather  Hitchcock.  .  . 

DEAR  JONES:  Mat  Hitchcock;  that  little  cad? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Is  he  a  little  cad?  I 
thought  he  was  rather — bright. 

After  this,  conversation  was  desultory ;  and  soon  the 
male  guests  were  left  to  their  untrammeled  selves, 
tobacco  and  the  Bishop.  At  eleven  minutes  past  ten, 
in  the  vestibule  of  Judge  Gillespie's  house,  a  young 
man  and  a  man  not  so  young  were  buttoning  their 
overcoats  and  lighting  their  cigarettes.  In  the  parlor 
behind  them  a  soft  contralto  voice  was  lingering  on  the 
rich,  deep  notes  of  "  Der  Asra,"  the  sweetest  song  of 
Jewish  inspiration,  the  song  of  Heine  and  of  Rubin- 
stein. They  paused  a  moment  as  the  voice  died  away 
in 

"  Und  mein  Stamm  sind  jene  Asra, 
Welclie  sterben  wenn  sie  lieben!" 


BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER. 

The  man  not  so  young  said:   "Well,   come   along. 
What  are  you  waiting  for  ?  " 

DEAR  JONES  :  What  the  devil  are  you  in  such  a 
hurry  for,  Uncle  Larry?  It  looked  abominably  rude 
to  leave  those  people  in  that  way ! " 


III. 

THE    THIRD    CONVERSATION. 

TUESDAY,  May  30,  1882. 

As  the  first  band  of  the  Decoration  Day  procession 
struck  up  "  Marching  through  Georgia  "  and  marched 
past  Uncle  Larry's  house,  a  cheerfully  expectant 
party  filed  out  of  the  parlor  windows  upon  the  broad 
stone  balcony,  draped  with  the  flag  that  had  floated 
over  the  building  for  the  four  long  years  the  day  com- 
memorated. Uncle  Larry  had  secured  the  Duchess  to 
matronize  the  annual  gathering  of  young  friends,  the 
final  friendly  meeting  before  the  flight  out  of  town; 
and  many  of  those  who  accepted  him  as  the  universal 
uncle  had  accepted  also  this  invitation.  Dear  Jones 
and  Baby  Van  Rensselaer  were  seated  in  the  corner 
of  the  balcony  that  caught  the  southern  sun,  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer,  in  Uncle  Larry's  own  study  chair,  while 
Dear  Jones  was  comfortably  and  gracefully  perched  on 
the  broad  brown-stone  railing  of  the  balcony. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Now,  does  n't  that  music 
make  your  heart  leap  ? 

DEAR  JONES  :  M' —  yes. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  You  know  I  have  n't  the 


122  DEAE  JONES  AND 

least  bit  of  sympathy  with  that  affected  talk  about  not 
being  moved  by  these  things,  and  thinking  it  vulgar 
and  all  that.  I  'ni  proud  to  say  I  love  my  country,  and 
I  do  love  to  see  my  country's  soldiers.  Don't  you  ?  " 

DEAR  JONES  :  M' — yes. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Of  course,  I  can't  really 
remember  anything  about  the  war,  but  I  try  to  pretend 
to  myself  that  I  do  remember  when  I  was  held  up  at 
the  window  to  see  the  troops  marching  back  from  the 
grand  review  at  Washington.  (Rather  more  softly.} 
Mama  told  me  about  it  often  before  she  died.  And 
"  Marching  through  Georgia "  always  makes  the  tears 
come  to  my  eyes ;  don't  it  yours  ? 

DEAR  JONES:  M' — yes. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  "Yes!"  How  queerly 
you  say  that ! 

DEAR  JONES  (grimly} :  I  'm  rather  more  inclined  to 
cry  when  the  band  makes 

"Stream  and  forest,  liill  and  strand, 
Keverberate  with  *  Dixie.'  " 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  (coldly) :  I  'm  afraid,  Mr. 
Jones,  I  do  not  understand  you.  And  you  appear  to 
have  a  veiy  peculiar  feeling  about  these  things. 

DEAR  JONES  [rather  absently']  :  Well,  yes,  it  is  rather 
a  matter  of  feeling  with  me.  Weak,  I  suppose  —  but 
the  fact  is,  Miss  Van  Rensselaer,  it  just  breaks  me  up 
to  see  all  this.  You  know,  the  war  hit  me  pretty  hard. 
I  lost  my  brother  in  hospital  after  Seven  Pines  —  and 
then  I  lost  my  father,  the  best  friend  I  ever  had,  at 
Gettysburg,  on  the  hill,  you  know,  when  he  was  lead- 


BABY  VAN  EENSSELAEE.  123 

ing  his  regiment,  and  his  men  could  n't  make  him  stay 
back.  So,  you  see,  I  would  n't  have  come  here  at  all 
to-day  if  —  if  — 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Oh,  Mr.  Jones,  I  'm  so 
sorry. 

DEAR  JONES  {surprised^'.  Sorry?    Why? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  I  did  n't  quite  under- 
stand you  —  but  I  do  now.  Why,  you  're  taking  off 
your  hat.  What  is  it?  Oh,  the  battle-flags ! 

DEAR  JONES  :  My  father's  regiment. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [to  herself] :  I  wonder 
if  that  is  the  regiment  I  saw  coming  back  from  Wash- 
ington ? 

IV. 

THE   FOURTH   CONVERSATION. 

TUESDAY,  August  22,  1882. 

The  train  rattled  hotly  along  on  its  sultry  journey 
from  one  end  of  Long  Island  to  the  other,  a  journey  the 
half  of  which  it  had  nearly  accomplished  with  much 
fuss  and  fret.  Leaving  his  impediments  of  travel  in 
the  smoker,  Dear  Jones  entered  the  forward  end  of  the 
parlor  car  in  search  of  an  uncontaminated  glass  of 
water.  As  he  set  down  the  glass  he  glanced  along  the 
car,  and  his  manner  changed  at  once.  He  openedl  the 
door  for  an  instant  and  threw  on  the  down  track  his 
half-smoked  cigarette ;  and  then,  smiling  pleasantly,  he 
walked  firmly  down  the  car,  past  a  rustic  bridal  couple, 
and  took  a  vacant  seat  just  in  front  of  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer. 


124  DEAR  JONES  AND 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Why,  Mr.  Jones ! 

DEAR  JONES  :  Why,  Miss  Van  Rensselaer ! 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Who  would  have  thought 
of  seeing  you  here  in  this  hot  weather  ? 

DEAR  JONES:  Can  I  have  this  seat  or  is  it  that  I 
mank  at  the  convenances  —  as  the  French  say? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  It's  Uncle  Larry's  chair 
—  he's  gone  back  to  talk  to  one  of  his  vestrymen  — 
he 's  taking  me  to  Shelter  Island. 

DEAR  JONES:  Shelter  Island?  How  long  are  you 
going  to  stay  there  ? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  And  where  are  you  going  ? 

DEAR  JONES  :  I  'm  going  to  Sag  Harbor  to  build  a 
house  for  one  of  my  billionaires. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Sag  Harbor?  What  an 
extraordinary  place  for  a  house. 

DEAR  JONES:  Oh,  that's  nothing.  Last  year  I  had 
to  build  a  house  up  in  Chemung  county. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Chemung  ? 

DEAR  JONES  [spelling  if\  :  C-h-e-m-u-n-g'  —  accent 
on  the  mung.  You  probably  call  it  Cheemung,  but  it 
is  really  Sh'mung. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Where  is  it?  and  how 
do  you  get  there  ? 

DEAR  JONES  :  By  the  Chemung  defer,  of  course. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Oh,  Mr.  Jones. 

DEAR  JONES  :  You  see,  my  mind  is  relaxed  by  the 
effort  to  build  a  house  on  the  model  of  the  one  occupied 
by  the  old  woman  who  lived  in  a  shoe  —  and  that  variety 
of  early  English  architecture  is  very  wearing  on  the 
taste.  What  sort  of  a  house  is  it  you  are  going  to  at 


BABY  VAN  RENSSELAEE.  125 

Shelter  Island  ?  And  how  long  are  you  going  to  stay 
there  ? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Oh,  it 's  a  stupid,  old- 
fashioned  place  [pause].  Do  you  think  that  bride  is 
pretty?  I  have  been  watching  them  ever  since  we 
left  New  York.  They  have  been  to  town  on  their 
wedding-trip. 

DEAR  JONES  :  She  is  ratherish  pretty.  And  he 's  a 
shrewd  fellow  and  likely  to  get  on.  I  should  n't  wonder 
if  he  was  the  chief  wire-puller  of  his  "  deestrick." 

BABY  VAN  REXSSELAER  :  A  village  Hampden  ? 

DEAR  JONES:  Some  day  he'll  withstand  the  little 
tyrant  of  the  fields  and  lead  a  revolt  against  the  garden- 
sass  monopoly,  and  so  sail  into  the  legislature.  I  fear 
the  bride  is  destined  to  ruin  her  digestion  in  an  Albany 
boarding-house,  while  the  groom  gives  his  days  and 
nights  to  affairs  of  state. 

Here  the  train  slackened  its  speed  as  it  approached 
a  small  station  from  which  shrill  notes  of  music 
arose. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Look,  the  bride  is  going 
to  leave  us. 

DEAR  JONES  :  He  lives  here,  and  the  local  fife  and 
drum  corps  have  come  to  welcome  him  home.  Dinna 
ye  hear  that  strident  "  Hail  to  the  Chief,"  they  have 
just  executed? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  How  proudly  she  looks 
up  at  him !  I  think  the  band  ought  to  play  something 
for  her  —  but  they  are  men,  and  they'll  never  think 
of  it. 


126  DEAR  JONES  AND 

DEAR  JONES:  You  cannot  expect  much  tact  from 
two  fifes  and  a  bass  drum,  but  unless  my  ears  deceive 
me  they  have  greeted  the  bride  with  a  well-meant 
attempt  at  "  Home,  Sweet  Home." 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  : 

"  And  each  responsive  soul  has  heard 

That  plaintive  note's  appealing. 
So  deeply  '  Home,  Sweet  Home '  has  stirred 
The  hidden  founts  of  feeling." 

DEAR  JONES  [surprised] :  Why  —  how  did  you 
know  that  poem? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Oh,  I  heard  somebody 
quote  it  last  Decoration  Day  —  I  don't  know  who — it 
struck  me  as  very  pretty  and  I  looked  it  up. 

DEAR  JONES  [pleased]  :  Oh,  I  remember.  It  has 
always  been  a  favorite  of  mine. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [coldly']  :  Indeed? 

DEAR  JONES  [as  the  train  starts  again]  :  Bride  and 
groom,  fife  and  drum,  fade  away  from  sight  and  hear- 
ing. I  wonder  if  we  shall  ever  think  of  them  again? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  I  shall,  I'm  sure.  She 
was  so  pretty.  And,  besides,  the  music  was  lively.  I 
shan't  have  anything  half  as  amusing  as  that  at  Shelter 
Island. 

DEAR  JONES:  Don't  you  like  it,  then? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Oh,  dear  no!  I  shall  be 
glad  to  get  away  to  my  aunt's  place  at  Watch  Hill. 
It's  very  poky  indeed,  at  Shelter  Island  (sighs).  And 
to  think  that  I  shall  have  to  spend  just  two  weeks  of 
primness  and  propriety  there. 

DEAR  JONES  :  Just  two  weeks?    Ah ! 


BAB  T  VAN  EENSSELAEE.  127 

V. 

THE    FIFTH    CONVERSATION. 

TUESDAY,  Septembers,  1882.     (Afternoon.) 

ALTHOUGH  it  is  difficult  to  tell  the  length  from  the 
breadth  of  the  small  steamer  that  plies  between  Sag 
Harbor  and  New  London,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  it 
was  the  bow  that  was  pointing  away  from  the  Shelter 
Island  dock  as  Baby  Van  Rensselaer  stepped  out  of 
the  cabin  and  Dear  Jones  walked  up  to  her,  lifting  his 
hat  with  an  expression  of  surprise  on  his  face  that 
might  have  been  better,  considering  that  he  had  re- 
hearsed it  a  number  of  times  since  he  left  Sag  Harbor. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Why,  Mr.  Jones ! 

DEAR  JONES  [forgetting  his  lines,  and  improvis- 
ing']'. How — how  —  odd  we  should  meet  again  just 
here.  Funny,  isn't  it? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  It  is  exceedingly  humor- 
ous. 

DEAR  JONES:  I  did  not  tell  you,  did  I! — when  I 
saw  you  on  the  train,  you  know — that  I  had  to  go  to 
New  London,  after  I  'd  finished  my  work  at  Sag  Har- 
bor. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [uncompromisingly']  :  I 
don't  think  you  said  anything  about  New  London 
at  all. 

DEAR  JONES:  I  probably  said  the  Pequot  House. 
It 's  the  same  thing,  you  know.  I  have  to  go  to  New 
London  to  inspect  the  Race  Rock  lighthouse  —  you've 
heard  of  the  famous  lighthouse  at  Race  Rock,  of  course. 


128  DEAR  JONES  AND 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  I  don't  think  its  fame  has 
reached  me. 

DEAR  JONES  :  It 's  a  very  curious  structure,  indeed. 
And,  the  fact  is,  one  of  my  —  my  billionaires  —  wants 
a  lighthouse.  He  has  an  extraordinary  notion  of  build- 
ing a  lighthouse  near  his  place  on  the  seashore  —  a 
lighthouse  of  his  own.  Odd  idea,  isn't  it? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  It  is  a  very  odd  proceed- 
ing altogether,  I  should  say. 

DEAR  JONES  :  I  suppose  you  mean  that  I  am  a  very 
odd  proceeding.  Well,  I  will  confess,  and  throw  my- 
self on  your  mercy.  I  did  hope  to  meet  you  —  and 
the  Duch — Mrs.  Martin.  After  two  weeks  of  the  so- 
ciety of  billionaires,  I  think  I'm  excusable.  .  .  .  \_A 
painful  pause."]  And  I  had  to  go  to  Race  Rock,  so 
I  got  off  a  day  earlier  than  I  had  meant  to,  by  cutting 
one  of  the  turrets  out  of  my  original  plan — he  didn't 
mind  —  there  are  eleven  left  —  and — and — will  you 
forgive  me? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Really,  I  have  nothing  to 
forgive,  Mr.  Jones.  I've  no  doubt  my  aunt  will  be 
very  glad  to  see  you. 

DEAR  JONES  :  Ah — how  is  Mrs.  Martin? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  .  She  is  in  the  cabin.  She 
is  quite  well  at  present ;  but  she  is  always  very  nervous 
about  sea-sickness,  and  she  prefers  to  lie  down.  I  must 
go  in  and  sit  with  her. 

DEAR  JONES  \_quickly~\:  Indeed — I  didn't  know 
Mrs.  Martin  suffered  from  sea-sickness.  She's  crossed 
the  ocean  so  many  times,  you  know.  How  many  is 
it? 


BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER.  129 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Six,  I  think. 

DEAR  JONES  :  No ;  eight,  is  n't  it  ?  I  'm  almost  sure 
it's  eight. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Very  possibly.  But  she 
is  a  great  sufferer.  I  must  go  and  see  how  she  is. 

DEAR  JONES:  Yes,  we'll  go.  I  want  to  see  Mrs. 
Martin.  One  of  the  disadvantages  of  the  summer  sea- 
son is  that  one  can't  see  the  Duchess  at  regular  inter- 
vals to  exchange  gossip. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELLAER:  Well,  if  you  have  any 
confidential  gossip  for  the  Duchess,  I  will  wait  here 
until  you  come  out.  I  want  to  get  all  the  fresh  air 
possible,  if  I  have  to  sit  in  the  cabin  for  the  rest  of  the 
trip. 

DEAR  JONES  [asserting  himself  ~\  :  Very  well.  I 
have  the  contents  of  four  letters  from  Newport  to 
pour  into  the  Duchess's  ear.  You  know  I  was  staying 
at  the  Hitchcocks'  for  a  fortnight,  before  I  went  to  Sag 
Harbor. 

He  went  into  the  stuffy  little  cabin,  where  the  Duch- 
ess was  lying  on  a  bench,  in  a  wilderness  of  shawls. 
Baby  Van  Rensselaer  waited  a  good  half-hour,  but 
heard  no  sound  of  returning  footsteps  from  that 
gloomy  cave.  Finally  she  went  in  to  investigate,  and 
was  told  by  the  Duchess  that  "  Dear  Jones  has  gone 
after,  or  whatever  you  call  it,  to  smoke  a  cigar." 
Baby  Van  Rensselaer  made  up  her  mind  that  under 
those  circumstances  she  would  go  forward  and  read 
her  book.  She  also  made  up  her  mind  that  Mr. 
Jones  was  extremely  rude.  His  rudeness,  she  found, 


130  DEAR  JONES  AND 

as  she  sat  reading  at  the  bow  of  the  boat,  really  spoiled 
her  book.  She  knew  that  she  ought  not  to  let  such 
little  things  annoy  her ;  but  then,  it  was  a  very  stupid 
chapter,  and  the  fresh  sea  breeze  blew  the  pages  back 
and  forward,  and  her  veil  would  not  stay  over  her  hair, 
and  she  always  had  hated  traveling,  and  it  was  so  dis- 
agreeable to  have  people  behave  in  that  way — espe- 
cially people — well,  any  people.  Just  here  she  turned 
her  head,  and  saw  Dear  Jones  advancing  from  the 
cabin  with  a  bright  and  smiling  face. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  {about  to  rise] :  My  aunt 
wants  me,  I  suppose. 

DEAR  JONES:  Not  at  all  —  not  in  the  least  —  at  pres- 
ent. I  just  came  through  the  cabin  —  on  tiptoe  —  and 
she  was  fast  asleep.  In  fact,  not  to  speak  it  profanely, 
she  was  —  she  was  audible. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAEB  :  Oh ! 

DEAR  JONES:  I'm  glad  to  see  you're  getting  the 
benefit  of  the  fresh  air. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  I  was  afraid  of  waking 
my  aunt  with  the  rustling  of  the  leaves  of  rny  book,  so 
I  came  out  here. 

DEAR  JONES:  I'm  glad  you  did.  It  would  be  a 
shame  for  you  to  have  to  sit  in  that  close  cabin. 
That's  the  reason  I  didn't  come  back  to  you  when 
I  left  Mrs.  Martin.  I  played  a  pious  fraud  on  you  for 
the  benefit  of  your  health. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  You  were  very  consider- 
ate. 

DEAR  JONES  [enthusiastically'}  :  Oh,  not  at  all. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [calmly'] :  And  if  you'll 


BABY  VAN  EENSSELAER.  131 

excuse  me,  I'll  finish  my  book.  I  can't  read  in  the 
cabin. 

Baby  Van  Rensselaer  resumed  her  reading  and 
found  the  book  improved  a  little.  After  a  while  she 
looked  up  and  saw  Dear  Jones  sitting  on  the  rail, 
meekly  twirling  his  thumbs. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [after  an  effort  at  silence']  : 
Don't  be  so  ridiculously  absurd.  What  are  you  doing 
there? 

DEAR  JONES  :  I  'm  waiting  to  be  spoken  to. 

Baby  Van  Rensselaer  smiled.  The  boat  had  just 
swung  out  of  the  jaws  of  the  bay.  Overhead  was  the 
full  glory  of  a  sky  which  made  one  believe  that  there 
never  was  such  a  thing  as  a  cloud.  And  they  sped 
along  over  the  sea  of  water  in  a  sea  of  light.  Just  then 
there  crime  from  the  depths  under  the  cabin  the  rise 
and  fall  of  a  measured,  mocking  melody,  high  and 
clear  as  the  notes  of  a  lark. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Why,  that  must  be  a 
bird  whistling  —  only  birds  don't  whistle  "Amaryl- 
lis." 

DEAR  JONES  :  'Tis  n't  a  bird  —  it 's  an  engineer. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  An  engineer? 

DEAR  JONES  :  A  grimy  engineer.  Quite  a  pathetic 
story,  too.  Some  of  the  Sag  Harbor  people  took  him 
up  as  a  boy.  He  had  a  wonderful  ear  and  an  extra- 
ordinary tenor  voice.  They  were  going  to  make  a 
Mario  of  him.  They  paid  for  his  education  in  New 
York,  and  then  sent  him  over  to  Paris  to  the  Conser- 
vatory to  be  finished  off.  And  he  had  n't  been  there 
six  weeks  before  he  caught  the  regular  Paris  pleurisy 


132  DEAR  JONES  AND 

—  it 's  an  article  de  Paris,  you  know,  and  lost  his  voice 
utterly  and  hopelessly. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Oh ! 

DEAR  JONES:  And  so  he  had  to  come  back  and 
engineer  for  his  living. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  How  very  sad.  Now  I 
can  scarcely  bear  to  hear  him  whistle. 

DEAR  JONES  [to  himself  ~\  :  Well,  I  didn't  mean  to 
produce  that  effect.  [  To  her.~\  Oh,  he  does  n't  mind 
it  a  bit.  Hear  him  now. 

The  engineer  was  executing  a  series  of  brilliant  varia- 
tions on  the  "Air  du  Hoi  Louis  XIII.,"  melting  by  in- 
genious gradations  into  the  "  Babies  on  our  Block." 

DEAR  JONES  [hastily"]  :  Race  Rock  lies  over  that 
way.  You  can't  see  it  yet  —  but  you  will  after  a  while. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Oh,  then  there  is  a  Race 
Rock? 

DEAR  JONES  :  Why,  certainly.  .  .  . 

With  this  starter,  it  may  readily  be  understood  that 
a  man  of  Dear  Jones's  fecundity  of  intellect  and  fine 
imaginative  powers  was  able  to  fill  the  greater  part  of 
the  afternoon  with  fluent  conversation.  Two  or  three 
times  Baby  Van  Rensselaer  made  futile  attempts  to  go 
into  the  cabin  to  see  how  the  Duchess  was  sleeping ; 
but  as  many  times  she  forgot  her  errand.  There  was  a 
fair  breeze  blowing  from  the  northeast,  but  the  sea  was 
smooth,  and  the  little  boat  scarcely  rocked  on  the  long, 
low  waves.  It  was  getting  toward  four  o'clock  when 
there  was  a  sudden  stoppage  of  the  engineer's  whist- 


BABY  VAN  EENSSELAEB.  133 

ling,  and  of  the  machinery  of  the  boat.  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer  sent  Dear  Jones  back  to  inquire  into  the 
cause,  for  they  were  alone  on  the  broad  sea,  with  only 
a  tantalizing  glimpse  of  New  London  harbor  stretching 
out  welcoming  arms  of  green,  with  the  Groton  monu- 
ment stuck  like  a  huge  clothes-pin  on  the  left  arm. 
Dear  Jones  came  back,  trying  hard  to  look  decently 
perturbed  and  gloomy,  but  with  a  barbarian  joy  light- 
ing up  his  bronzed  features. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  What  is  it  ? 

DEAR  JONES  :  The  machinery  is  on  a  dead  centre. 
And  the  whistling  engineer  says  that  he'll  have  to 
wait  until  he  can  get  into  port  and  hitch  a  horse  to  the 
crank  to  start  her  off  again. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  But  how  are  we  to  get 
into  port? 

DEAR  JONES  :  The  whistling  engineer  further  says 
that  we  are  now  drifting  toward  Watch  Hill. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  That 's  just  where  we 
want  to  go. 

DEAR  JONES  :  Yes.  [An  unholy  toot  from  the  steam 
whistle.']  And  there  he  is  signalling  that  yacht  to  take 
us  off! 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  I  must  go  to  my  aunt 
now. 

DEAR  JONES  :  Why  —  there 's  no  hurry. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  No,  but  she  '11  be  so 
frightened  —  she'll  think  it's  going  to  blow  up  or 
something. 

Baby  Van  Rensselaer  disappeared  in  the  depths  of 
the  cabin.  Dear  Jones  disconsolately  walked  the  deck 


134  DEAR  JONES  AND 

in  solitary  silence  for  five  minutes.  When  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer  reappeared,  his  spirits  rose. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  My  aunt  is  afraid  you 
may  have  difficulty  in  reaching  New  London  to-night. 
She  wants  me  to  ask  you  if  you  won't  stay  over-night 
at  her  place  at  Watch  Hill  ? 

DEAR  JONES  :  Won't  I  ?  Well,  I  will  —  have  much 
pleasure  hi  accepting  your  aunt's  invitation. 

VI. 

THE    SIXTH   CONVERSATION. 

TUESDAY,  Septembers,  1882.     (Evening.) 

A  row  of  Japanese  lanterns  shed  a  Cathayan  light 
along  the  little  path  leading  from  the  Duchess's  house 
on  a  rocky  promontory  to  the  little  beach  which  nestled 
under  its  shoulder.  The  moon  softly  and  judiciously 
lit  up  the  baby  breakers  which  in  Long  Island  Sound 
imitate  the  surf  of  the  outer  sea.  It  threw  eerie 
shadows  behind  the  bath-houses,  and  fell  with  gentle 
radiance  upon  two  dripping  but  shapely  figures  emerg- 
ing from  the  water,  where  the  other  bathers  were  un- 
wisely lingering. 

DEAR  JONES:  I  think  this  is  simply  delightful.  I 
really  never  got  the  perfect  enjoyment  of  an  evening 
swim  before. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  I  am  glad  you  enjoyed  it. 

DEAR  JONES  :  There  is  something  so  charming  in 
this  aristocratic  seclusion,  with  the  shouts  and  laughter 
of  the  vulgar  herd  just  far  enough  off  to  be  picturesque 
—  if  you  can  call  a  noise  picturesque. 


BABY  VAN  BENSSELAER.  135 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [coldly~\ :  I  think  this  beach 
might  be  a  little  more  private  —  it 's  shared  in  common 
by  these  three  cottages. 

DEAR  JONES  :  But  they  seem  to  be  very  nice  people 
here.  And  they  all  swim  so  well,  it  quite  put  me  on 
my  mettle.  You  are  really  a  splendid  swimmer,  do 
you  know  it  ?  And  that  girl  I  towed  out  to  the  buoy, 
who  is  she  ? 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  [explosively] :  Mr.  Jones, 
this  is  positively  insulting ! 

DEAR  JONES:  Wh  —  what  —  wh  —  why?  I  don't 
understand  you. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  To  pretend  that  you  don't 
know  that  Hitchcock  woman ! 

DEAR  JONES  [innocently} :  Was  that  Miss  Hitch- 
cock ?  I  did  n't  recognize  her. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  If  this  is  your  idea  of 
humor,  Mr.  Jones,  it  is  simply  offensive ! 

DEAR  JONES  :  But,  upon  my  soul,  I  did  n't  know  the 
girl  —  nor  she  me  ! 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  You  did  n't  know  her  ? 
After  you  have  been  staying  two  weeks  at  her  house 
at  Newport  ? 

DEAR  JONES  [with  something  like  dignity}  :  I  was 
staying  at  her  father's  house,  Miss  Van  Rensselaer, 
arid  Miss  Hitchcock  was  away  on  a  visit. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Up  the  Saguenay,  perhaps? 

DEAR  JONES:  Very  likely.  Miss  Hitchcock  may 
have  left  a  large  part  of  the  Saguenay  unexplored  for 
all  I  know.  I  was  introduced  to  her  party  only  half 
an  hour  before  we  got  off  the  boat  at  Quebec. 


136  DEAR  JONES  AND 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  Long  enough,  however, 
to  discover  that  she  was  "  bright." 

DEAR  JONES  :  Quite  long  enough,  Miss  Van  Rens- 
selaer.  One  may  find  out  a  great  deal  of  another's 
character  in  half  an  hour. 

There  was  a  pause,  which  was  filled  by  the  strains 
of  a  Virginia  reel,  coming  from  one  of  the  cottages 
high  up  on  the  bank,  where  an  impromptu  dance  was 
just  begun.  The  moonlight  fell  on  Baby  Van  Rensse- 
laer's  little  white  teeth,  set  firmly  between  her  parted 
lips.  The  pause  was  broken. 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAEE:  If  you  propose  to  descend 
to  brutality  of  this  sort,  Mr.  Jones,  I  think  we  need 
prolong  neither  the  conversation  —  nor  the  acquaint- 
ance. 

DEAR  JONES  [honestly] :  No  —  you  can't  mean  that 
—  Miss  Van  Rensselaer  —  Baby  — 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  What,  sir !  Your  famili- 
arity is  —  I  can't  stand  familiarity  from  you!  (She 
clenches  her  little  hands.) 

DEAR  JONES:  You  have  no  right  to  treat  me  like 
this.  If  I  am  f amiliar  it  is  because  I  love  you  —  and 
you  know  it ! 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER:  This  is  the  first  I  have 
heard  of  it,  sir.  I  trust  it  will  be  the  last.  Will  you 
kindly  permit  me  to  pass,  or  must  I  — 

DEAR  JONES:  You  may  go  where  you  wish,  Miss 
Van  Renssellaer —  No,  come,  this  is  ridiculous  — 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  Is  it  ? 


BABY  VAN  RENSSELAEE.  137 

DEAR  JONES  :  I  mean  it  is  foolish.     Don't  let  ns  — 
BABY  VAN   RENSSELAER:    Don't  let  us  see   each 
other  again ! 


VII. 


THE    SEVENTH   CONVERSATION. 

THURSDAY,  February  14,  1884. 

As  the  soft,  low  notes  of  the  wedding-march  from 
"  Lohengrin  "  fell  gently  from  the  organ-loft  over  the 
entrance  of  Grace  Church,  the  quartet  of  able-bodied 
ushers  passed  up  the  centre  aisle  and  parted  the  white 
ribbons — a  silken  barrier  which  they  had  gallantly 
defended  for  an  hour  in  a  vain  effort  to  keep  the 
common  herd  of  acquaintance  separate  from  the  chosen 
many  of  the  family.  Behind  them  came  two  pretty 
little  girls,  strewing  the  aisle  with  white  flowers  from 
their  aprons.  The  four  bridesmaids,  two  abreast,  passed 
up  the  aisle  after  the  little  girls,  proud  in  their  reflected 
glory.  Then  came  the  bride,  leaning  on  Judge  Gil- 
lespie's  arm,  and  radiant  with  youth  and  beauty  and 
happiness.  As  the  procession  drew  near  the  chancel- 
rail,  the  groom  came  from  the  vestry  and  advanced  to 
meet  her,  accompanied  by  his  best  man,  Uncle  Larry, 
who  relieved  him  of  his  hat  and  overcoat,  the  which 
he  would  dextrously  return  to  him  when  the  happy 
couple  should  leave  the  church  man  and  wife.  And  in 
due  time  the  Bishop  asked,  "Wilt  thou  have  this 
Woman  to  thy  wedded  wife  ?  " 

DEAK  JONES  :  I  will. 


138  DEAR  JONES. 

The  Bishop  asked  again,  "  Wilt  thou  have  this  Man 
to  thy  wedded  husband  ?  " 

BABY  VAN  RENSSELAER  :  I  will. 

As  they  knelt  at  the  altar  the  sun  came  out  and  fell 
through  the  window,  and  the  stained  glass  sifted  down 
on  them  the  mingled  hues  of  hope  and  of  faith  and 
love ;  and  the  Bishop  blessed  them. 


THE    RIVAL    GHOSTS. 

BY  BKANDER  MATTHEWS. 


rTIHE  good  ship  sped  on  her  way  across  the  calm 
-J-  Atlantic.  It  was  an  outward  passage,  according 
to  the  little  charts  which  the  company  had  charily  dis- 
tributed, but  most  of  the  passengers  were  homeward 
bound,  after  a  summer  of  rest  and  recreation,  and  they 
were  counting  the  days  before  they  might  hope  to  see 
Fire  Island  Light.  On  the  lee  side  of  the  boat,  com- 
fortably sheltered  from  the  wind,  and  just  by  the  door 
of  the  captain's  room  (which  was  theirs  during  the  day), 
sat  a  little  group  of  returning  Americans.  The  Duch- 
ess (she  was  down  on  the  the  purser's  list  as  Mrs. 
Martin,  but  her  friends  and  familiars  called  her  the 
Duchess  of  Washington  Square)  and  Baby  Van  Rens- 
selaer  (she  was  quite  old  enough  to  vote,  had  her  sex 
been  entitled  to  that  duty,  but  as  the  younger  of  two 
sisters  she  was  still  the  baby  of  the  family) — the 
Duchess  and  Baby  Van  Rensselaer  were  discussing 
the  pleasant  English  voice  and  the  not  unpleasant 
English  accent  of  a  manly  young  lordling  who  was 
going  to  America  for  sport.  Uncle  Larry  and  Dear 
Jones  were  enticing  each  other  into  a  bet  on  the  ship's 
run  of  the  morrow. 

139 


140  THE  EIVAL   GHOSTS. 

"  I  '11  give  you  two  to  one  she  don't  make  420,"  said 
Dear  Jones. 

"  I  '11  take  it,"  answered  Uncle  Larry.  "  We  made 
427  the  fifth  day  last  year."  It  was  Uncle  Larry's 
seventeenth  visit  to  Europe,  and  this  was  therefore  his 
thirty-fourth  voyage. 

"And  when  did  you  get  in?"  asked  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer.  "I  don't  care  a  bit  about  the  run,  so 
long  as  we  get  in  soon." 

"  We  crossed  the  bar  Sunday  night,  just  seven  days 
after  we  left  Queenstown,  and  we  dropped  anchor  off 
Quarantine  at  three  o'clock  on  Monday  morning." 

"  I  hope  we  sha'  n't  do  that  this  time.  I  can't  seem 
to  sleep  any  when  the  boat  stops." 

"I  can;  but  I  didn't,"  continued  Uncle  Larry; 
"because  my  stateroom  was  the  most  for'ard  in  the 
boat,  and  the  donkey-engine  that  let  down  the  anchor 
was  right  over  my  head." 

"  So  you  got  up  and  saw  the  sunrise  over  the  bay," 
said  Dear  Jones,  "  with  the  electric  lights  of  the  city 
twinkling  in  the  distance,  and  the  first  faint  flush  of 
the  dawn  in  the  east  just  over  Fort  Lafayette,  and  the 
rosy  tinge  which  spread  softly  upward,  and  " — 

"Did  you  both  come  back  together?"  asked  the 
Duchess. 

"  Because  he  has  crossed  thirty-four  times  you  must 
not  suppose  he  has  a  monopoly  in  sunrises,"  retorted 
Dear  Jones.  "  No ;  this  was  my  own  sunrise ;  and  a 
mighty  pretty  one  it  was,  too." 

"I'm  not  matching  sunrises  with  you,"  remarked 
Uncle  Larry  calmly ;  "  but  I  'm  willing  to  back  a  merry 


THE  EIVAL   GHOSTS.  141 

jest  called  forth  by  my  sunrise  against  any  two  merry 
jests  called  forth  by  yours." 

"I  confess  reluctantly  that  my  sunrise  evoked  no 
merry  jest  at  all."  Dear  Jones  was  an  honest  man, 
and  would  scorn  to  invent  a  merry  jest  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment. 

"  That 's  where  my  sunrise  has  the  call,"  said  Uncle 
Larry  complacently. 

"  What  was  the  merry  jest  ?  "  was  Baby  Van  Rensse- 
laer's  inquiry,  the  natural  result  of  a  feminine  curiosity 
thus  artistically  excited. 

"  Well,  here  it  is.  I  was  standing  aft,  near  a  patri- 
otic American  and  a  wandering  Irishman,  and  the 
patriotic  American  rashly  declared  that  you  could  n't 
see  a  sunrise  like  that  anywhere  in  Europe,  and  this 
gave  the  Irishman  his  chance,  and  he  said,  '  Sure  ye 
don't  have  'm  here  till  we  're  through  with  'em  over 
there.'" 

"It  is  true,"  said  Dear  Jones  thoughtfully,  "that 
they  do  have  some  things  over  there  better  than  we  do ; 
for  instance,  umbrellas." 

"And  gowns,"  added  the  Duchess. 

"  And  antiquities  " —  this  was  Uncle  Larry's  contri- 
bution. 

"And  we  do  have  some  things  so  much  better  in 
America!"  protested  Baby  Van  Rensselaer,  as  yet 
uncorrupted  by  any  worship  of  the  effete  monarchies 
of  despotic  Europe.  "  We  make  lots  of  things  a  great 
deal  nicer  than  you  can  get  them  in  Europe  —  especi- 
ally ice-cream." 

"  And  pretty  girls,"  added  Dear  Jones ;  but  he  did 
not  look  at  her. 


142  THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS. 

"  And  spooks,"  remarked  Uncle  Larry  casually. 

"  Spooks  ?  "  queried  the  Duchess. 

"  Spooks.  I  maintain  the  word.  Ghosts,  if  you  like 
that  better,  or  spectres.  We  turn  out  the  best  quality 
of  spook" — 

"  You  forget  the  lovely  ghost  stories  about  the  Rhine, 
and  the  Black  Forest,"  interrupted  Miss  Van  Rensse- 
laer,  with  feminine  inconsistency. 

"  I  remember  the  Rhine  and  the  Black  Forest  and 
all  the  other  haunts  of  elves  and  fairies  and  hobgoblins ; 
but  for  good  honest  spooks  there  is  no  place  like  home. 
And  what  differentiates  our  spook  —  spiritus  Ameri- 
canus  —  from  the  ordinary  ghost  of  literature  is  that 
it  responds  to  the  American  sense  of  humor.  Take 
Irving's  stories,  for  example.  The  Headless  Horse- 
man^ that's  a  comic  ghost  story.  And  Rip  Van 
Winkle  —  consider  what  humor,  and  what  good- 
humor,  there  is  in  the  telling  of  his  meeting  with  the 
goblin  crew  of  Hendrik  Hudson's  men  !  A  still  better 
example  of  this  American  way  of  dealing  with  legend 
and  mystery  is  the  marvellous  tale  of  the  rival  ghosts." 

"  The  rival  ghosts  ?  "  queried  the  Duchess  and  Baby 
Van  Rensselaer  together.  "  Who  were  they  ?  " 

"  Did  n't  I  ever  tell  you  about  them  ? "  answered 
Uncle  Larry,  a  gleam  of  approaching  joy  flashing 
from  his  eye. 

"  Since  he  is  bound  to  tell  us  sooner  or  later,  we  'd 
better  be  resigned,  and  hear  it  now,"  said  Dear  Jones. 

"  If  you  are  not  more  eager,  I  won't  tell  it  at  all." 

"Oh,  do,  Uncle  Larry;  you  know  I  just  dote  on 
ghost  stories,"  pleaded  Baby  Van  Rensselaer. 


THE  EIVAL  GHOSTS.  143 

"  Once  upon  a  time,"  began  Uncle  Larry  —  "  in  fact, 
a  very  few  years  ago  —  there  lived  in  the  thriving 
town  of  New  York  a  young  American  called  Duncan 
—  Eliphalet  Duncan.  Like  his  name,  he  was  half 
Yankee  and  half  Scotch,  and  naturally  he  was  a  lawyer, 
and  had  come  to  New  York  to  make  his  way.  His 
father  was  a  Scotchman,  who  had  come  over  and 
settled  in  Boston,  and  married  a  Salem  girl.  When 
Eliphalet  Duncan  was  about  twenty  he  lost  both  of  his 
parents.  His  father  left  him  with  enough  money  to 
give  him  a  start,  and  a  strong  feeling  of  pride  in  his 
Scotch  birth ;  you  see  there  was  a  title  in  the  family 
in  Scotland,  and  although  Eliphalet's  father  was  the 
younger  son  of  a  younger  son,  yet  he  always  remem- 
bered, and  always  bade  his  only  son  to  remember,  that 
his  ancestry  was  noble.  His  mother  left  him  her  full 
share  of  Yankee  grit,  and  a  little  old  house  in  Salem 
which  had  belonged  to  her  family  for  more  than  two 
hundred  years.  She  was  a  Hitchcock,  and  the  Hitch- 
cocks  had  been  settled  in  Salem  since  the  year  1.  It 
was  a  great-great-grandfather  of  Mr.  Eliphalet  Hitch- 
cock who  was  foremost  in  the  time  of  the  Salem 
witchcraft  craze.  And  this  little  old  house  which  she 
left  to  my  friend  Eliphalet  Duncan  was  haunted." 

"By  the  ghost  of  one  of  the  witches,  of  course," 
interrupted  Dear  Jones. 

"  Now  how  could  it  be  the  ghost  of  a  witch,  since 
the  witches  were  all  burned  at  the  stake  ?  You  never 
heard  of  anybody  who  was  burned  having  a  ghost,  did 
you?"- 

"  That 's  an  argument  in  favor  of  cremation,   at 


144  THE  RIVAL   GHOSTS. 

any  rate,"  replied  Jones,  evading  the  direct  ques- 
tion. 

"  It  is,  if  you  don't  like  ghosts.  I  do,"  said  Baby 
Van  Rensselaer. 

"And  so  do  I,"  added  Uncle  Larry.  "I  love  a 
ghost  as  dearly  as  an  Englishman  loves  a  lord." 

"  Go  on  with  your  story,"  said  the  Duchess,  majesti- 
cally overruling  all  extraneous  discussion. 

"  This  little  old  house  at  Salem  was  haunted,"  re- 
sumed Uncle  Larry.  "  And  by  a  very  distinguished 
ghost  —  or  at  least  by  a  ghost  with  very  remarkable 
attributes." 

"  What  was  he  like  ?  "  asked  Baby  Van  Rensselaer, 
with  a  premonitory  shiver  of  anticipatory  delight. 

"  It  had  a  lot  of  peculiarities.  In  the  first  place,  it 
never  appeared  to  the  master  of  the  house.  Mostly  it 
confined  its  visitations  to  unwelcome  guests.  In  the 
course  of  the  last  hundred  years  it  had  frightened 
away  four  successive  mothers-in-law,  while  never  in- 
truding on  the  head  of  the  household." 

"  I  guess  that  ghost  had  been  one  of  the  boys  when 
he  was  alive  and  in  the  flesh."  This  was  Dear  Jones's 
contribution  to  the  telling  of  the  tale. 

"  In  the  second  place,"  continued  Uncle  Larry,  "  it 
never  frightened  anybody  the  first  time  it  appeared. 
Only  on  the  second  visit  were  the  ghost-seers  scared ; 
but  then  they  were  scared  enough  for  twice,  and  they 
rarely  mustered  up  courage  enough  to  risk  a  third 
interview.  One  of  the  most  curious  characteristics  of 
this  well-meaning  spook  was  that  it  had  no  face  —  or 
at  least  that  nobody  ever  saw  its  face." 


THE  EIVAL  GHOSTS.  145 

"  Perhaps  he  kept  his  countenance  veiled  ?  "  queried 
the  Duchess,  who  was  beginning  to  remember  that  she 
never  did  like  ghost  stories. 

"That  was  what  I  was  never  able  to  find  out.  I 
have  asked  several  people  who  saw  the  ghost,  and  none 
of  them  could  tell  me  anything  about  its  face,  and  yet 
while  in  its  presence  they  never  noticed  its  features, 
and  never  remarked  on  their  absence  or  concealment. 
It  was  only  afterward  when  they  tried  to  recall  calmly 
all  the  circumstances  of  meeting  with  the  mysterious 
stranger,  that  they  became  aware  that  they  had  not 
seen  its  face.  And  they  could  not  say  whether  the 
features  were  covered,  or  whether  they  were  wanting, 
or  what  the  trouble  was.  They  knew  only  that  the 
face  was  never  seen.  And  no  matter  how  often  they 
might  see  it,  they  never  fathomed  this  mystery.  To 
this  day  nobody  knows  whether  the  ghost  which  used 
to  haunt  the  little  old  house  in  Salem  had  a  face,  or 
what  manner  of  face  it  had." 

"  How  awfully  weird  ! "  said  Baby  Van  Rensselaer. 
"  And  why  did  the  ghost  go  away  ?  " 

"  I  have  n't  said  it  went  away,"  answered  Uncle 
Larry,  with  much  dignity. 

"  But  you  said  it  used  to  haunt  the  little  old  house 
at  Salem,  so  I  supposed  it  had  moved.  Did  n't  it  ?  " 

"  You  shall  be  told  in  due  time.  Eliphalet  Duncan 
used  to  spend  most  of  his  summer  vacations  at  Salem, 
and  the  ghost  never  bothered  him  at  all,  for  he  was 
the  master  of  the  house  —  much  to  his  disgust,  too, 
because  he  wanted  to  see  for  himself  the  mysterious 
tenant  at  will  of  his  property.  But  he  never  saw  it, 


146  THE  EIVAL  GHOSTS. 

never.  He  arranged  with  friends  to  call  him  when- 
ever it  might  appear,  and  he  slept  in  the  next  room 
with  the  door  open;  and  yet  when  their  frightened 
cries  waked  him  the  ghost  was  gone,  and  his  only 
reward  was  to  hear  reproachful  sighs  as  soon  as  he 
went  back  to  bed.  You  see,  the  ghost  thought  it  was 
not  fair  of  Eliphalet  to  seek  an  introduction  which  was 
plainly  unwelcome." 

Dear  Jones  interrupted  the  story-teller  by  getting  up 
and  tucking  a  heavy  rug  more  snugly  around  Baby  Van 
Ilensselaer's  feet,  for  the  sky  was  now  overcast  and 
gray,  and  the  air  was  damp  and  penetrating. 

"  One  fine  spring  morning,"  pursued  Uncle  Larry, 
"  Eliphalet  Duncan  received  great  news.  I  told  you 
that  there  was  a  title  in  the  family  in  Scotland,  and 
that  Eliphalet's  father  was  the  younger  son  of  a  younger 
son.  Well,  it  happened,  that  all  Eliphalet's  father's 
brothers  and  uncles  had  died  off  without  male  issue 
except  the  eldest  son  of  the  eldest,  and  he,  of  course, 
bore  the  title,  and  was  Baron  Duncan  of  Duncan. 
Now  the  great  news  that  Eliphalet  Duncan  received 
in  New  York  one  fine  spring  morning  was  that  Baron 
Duncan  and  his  only  son  had  been  yachting  in  the 
Hebrides,  and  they  had  been  caught  in  a  black  squall, 
and  they  were  both  dead.  So  my  friend  Eliphalet 
Duncan  inherited  the  title  and  the  estates." 

"  How  romantic  !  "-  said  the  Duchess.  "  So  he  was 
a  baron ! " 

"  Well,"  answered  Uncle  Larry,  "  he  was  a  baron  if 
he  chose.  But  he  did  n't  choose." 

"  More  fool  he  !  "  said  Dear  Jones  sententiously. 


THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS.  147 

"  Well,"  answered  Uncle  Larry,  "  I  'm  not  so  sure 
of  that.  You  see,  Eliphalet  Duncan  was  half  Scotch 
and  half  Yankee,  and  he  had  two  eyes  to  the  main 
chance.  He  held  his  tongue  about  his  windfall  of  luck 
until  he  could  find  out  whether  the  Scotch  estates  were 
enough  to  keep  up  the  Scotch  title.  He  soon  discovered 
that  they  were  not,  and  that  the  late  Lord  Duncan,  hav- 
ing married  money,  kept  up  such  state  as  he  could  out 
of  the  revenues  of  the  dowry  of  Lady  Duncan.  And 
Eliphalet,  he  decided  that  he  would  rather  be  a  well- 
fed  lawyer  in  New  York,  living  comfortably  on  his 
practice,  than  a  starving  lord  in  Scotland,  living  scant- 
ily on  his  title." 

"  But  he  kept  his  title  ?  "  asked  the  Duchess. 

"  Well,"  answered  Uncle  Larry,  "  he  kept  it  quiet. 
I  knew  it,  and  a  friend  or  two  more.  But  Eliphalet 
was  a  sight  too  smart  to  put  Baron  Duncan  of  Duncan, 
Attorney  and  Counsellor  at  Law,  on  his  shingle." 

"What  has  all  this  got  to  do  with  your  ghost?" 
asked  Dear  Jones  pertinently. 

u  Nothing  with  that  ghost,  but  a  good  deal  with  an- 
other ghost.  Eliphalet  was  very  learned  in  spirit  lore 
—  perhaps  because  he  owned  the  haunted  house  at 
Salem,  perhaps  because  he  was  a  Scotchman  by  de- 
scent. At  all  events,  he  had  made  a  special  study  of 
the  wraiths  and  white  ladies  and  banshees  and  bogies 
of  all  kinds  whose  sayings  and  doings  and  warnings  are 
recorded  in  the  annals  of  the  Scottish  nobility.  In 
fact,  he  was  acquainted  with  the  habits  of  every  repu- 
table spook  in  the  Scotch  peerage.  And  he  knew 
that  there  was  a  Duncan  ghost  attached  to  the  per- 


148  THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS. 

son  of  the  holder  of  the  title  of  Baron  Duncan  of 
Duncan." 

"  So,  besides  being  the  owner  of  a  haunted  house  in 
Salem,  he  was  also  a  haunted  man  in  Scotland  ?"  asked 
Baby  Van  Rensselaer. 

"  Just  so.  But  the  Scotch  ghost  was  not  unpleasant, 
like  the  Salem  ghost,  although  it  had  one  peculiarity  in 
common  with  its  transatlantic  fellow-spook.  It  never 
appeared  to  the  holder  of  the  title,  just  as  the  other 
never  was  visible  to  the  owner  of  the  house.  In  fact, 
the  Duncan  ghost  was  never  seen  at  all.  It  was  a 
guardian  angel  only.  Its  sole  duty  was  to  be  in  per- 
sonal attendance  on  Baron  Duncan  of  Duncan,  and  to 
warn  him  of  impending  evil.  The  traditions  of  the 
house  told  that  the  Barons  of  Duncan  had  again  and 
again  felt  a  premonition  of  ill  fortune.  Some  of  them 
had  yielded  and  withdrawn  from  the  venture  they 
had  undertaken,  and  it  had  failed  dismally.  Some  had 
been  obstinate,  and  had  hardened  their  hearts,  and  had 
gone  on  reckless  to  defeat  and  to  death.  In  no  case 
had  a  Lord  Duncan  been  exposed  to  peril  without  fair 


warning." 


"  Then  how  came  it  that  the  father  and  son  were 
lost  in  the  yacht  off  the  Hebrides  ? "  asked  Dear 
Jones. 

"Because  they  were  too  enlightened  to  yield  to 
superstition.  There  is  extant  now  a  letter  of  Lord 
Duncan,  written  to  his  wife  a  few  minutes  before  he 
and  his  son  set  sail,  in  which  he  tells  her  how  hard  he 
has  had  to  struggle  with  an  almost  overmastering  de- 
sire to  give  up  the  trip.  Had  he  obeyed  the  friendly 


THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS.  149 

warning  of  the  family  ghost,  the  latter  would  have 
been  spared  a  journey  across  the  Atlantic." 

"  Did  the  ghost  leave  Scotland  for  America  as  soon 
as  the  old  baron  died  ?  "  asked  Baby  Van  Rensselaer, 
with  much  interest. 

"  How  did  he  come  over,"  queried  Dear  Jones  — 
"in  the  steerage,  or  as  a  cabin  passenger?" 

"I  don't  know,"  answered  Uncle  Larry  calmly, 
"  and  Eliphalet,  he  did  n't  know.  For  as  he  was  in  no 
danger,  and  stood  in  no  need  of  warning,  he  could  n't 
tell  whether  the  ghost  was  on  duty  or  not.  Of  course 
he  was  on  the  watch  for  it  all  the  time.  But  he  never 
got  any  proof  of  its  presence  until  he  went  down  to  the 
little  old  house  of  Salem,  just  before  the  Fourth  of 
July,  He  took  a  friend  down  with  him  —  a  young 
fellow  who  had  been  in  the  regular  army  since  the  day 
Fort  Sumter  was  fired  on,  and  who  thought  that  after 
four  years  of  the  little  unpleasantness  down  South,  in- 
cluding six  months  in  Libby,  and  after  ten  years  of 
fighting  the  bad  Indians  on  the  plains,  he  wasn't  likely 
to  be  much  frightened  by  a  ghost.  Well,  Eliphalet 
and  the  officer  sat  out  on  the  porch  all  the  evening 
smoking  and  talking  over  points  in  military  law.  A 
little  after  twelve  o'clock,  just  as  they  began  to  think 
it  was  about  time  to  turn  in,  they  heard  the  most 
ghastly  noise  in  the  house.  It  was  n't  a  shriek,  or  a 
howl,  or  a  yell,  or  anything  they  could  put  a  name  to. 
It  was  an  undeterminate,  inexplicable  shiver  and  shud- 
der of  sound,  which  went  wailing  out  of  the  window. 
The  officer  had  been  at  Cold  Harbor,  but  he  felt  him- 
self getting  colder  this  time,  Eliphalet  knew  it  was 


150  THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS. 

the  ghost  who  haunted  the  house.  As  this  weird  sound 
died  away,  it  was  followed  by  another,  sharp,  short, 
blood-curdling  in  its  intensity.  Something  in  this  cry 
seemed  familiar  to  Eliphalet,  and  he  felt  sure  that  it 
proceeded  from  the  family  ghost,  the  warning  wraith 
of  the  Duncans." 

"  Do  I  understand  you  to  intimate  that  both  ghosts 
were  there  together  ?  "  inquired  the  Duchess  anxiously. 

"  Both  of  them  were  there,"  answered  Uncle  Larry. 
"  You  see,  one  of  them  belonged  to  the  house,  and  had 
to  be  there  all  the  time,  and  the  other  was  attached  to 
the  person  of  Baron  Duncan,  and  had  to  follow  him 
there ;  wherever  he  was,  there  was  that  ghost  also. 
But  Eliphalet,  he  had  scarcely  time  to  think  this  out 
when  he  heard  both  sounds  again,  not  one  after  an- 
other, but  both  together,  and  something  told  him  — 
some  sort  of  an  instinct  he  had  —  that  those  two 
ghosts  did  n't  agree,  did  n't  get  on  together,  did  n't 
exactly  hit  it  off ;  in  fact,  that  they  were  quarrelling." 

"  Quarrelling  ghosts  !  Well,  I  never ! "  was  Baby 
Van  Rensselaer's  remark. 

"  It  is  a  blessed  thing  to  see  ghosts  dwell  together  in 
unity,"  said  Dear  Jones. 

And  the  Duchess  added,  "  It  would  certainly  be  set- 
ting a  better  example." 

"You  know,"  resumed  Uncle  Larry,  "that  two  waves 
of  light  or  of  sound  may  interfere  and  produce  darkness 
or  silence.  So  it  was  with  these  rival  spooks.  They 
interfered,  but  they  did  not  produce  silence  or  dark- 
ness. On  the  contrary,  as  soon  as  Eliphalet  and  the 
officer  went  into  the  house,  there  began  at  once  a  series 


THE  RIVAL   GHOSTS.  151 

of  spiritualistic  manifestations,  a  regular  dark  seance. 
A  tambourine  was  played  upon,  a  bell  was  rung,  and  a 
flaming  banjo  went  singing  around  the  room." 

"  Where  did  they  get  the  banjo  ?  "  asked  Dear  Jones 
skeptically. 

"I  don't  know.  Materialized  it,  maybe,  just  as 
they  did  the  tambourine.  You  don't  suppose  a  quiet 
New  York  lawyer  kept  a  stock  of  musical  instruments 
large  enough  to  fit  out  a  strolling  minstrel  troupe  just 
on  the  chance  of  a  pair  of  ghosts  coming  to  give  him  a 
surprise  party,  do  you  ?  Every  spook  has  its  own  instru- 
ment of  torture.  Angels  play  on  harps,  I'm  informed, 
and  spirits  delight  in  banjos  and  tambourines.  These 
spooks  of  Eliphalet  Duncan's  were  ghosts  with  all  the 
modern  improvements,  and  I  guess  they  were  capable 
of  providing  their  own  musical  weapons.  At  all 
events,  they  had  them  there  in  the  little  old  house  at 
Salem  the  night  Eliphalet  and  his  friend  came  down. 
And  they  played  on  them,  and  they  rang  the  bell,  and 
they  rapped  here,  there,  and  everywhere.  And  they 
kept  it  up  all  night." 

"  All  night  ?  "  asked  the  awe-stricken  Duchess. 

"  All  night  long,"  said  Uncle  Larry  solemnly  ;  "  and 
the  next  night,  too.  Eliphalet  did  not  get  a  wink  of 
sleep,  neither  did  his  friend.  On  the  second  night  the 
house  ghost  was  seen  by  the  officer ;  on  the  third  night 
it  showed  itself  again;  and  the  next  morning  the 
officer  packed  his  grip-sack  and  took  the  first  train  to 
Boston.  He  was  a  New  Yorker,  but  he  said  he'd 
sooner  go  to  Boston  than  see  that  ghost  again.  Eli- 
phalet, he  was  n't  scared  at  all,  partly  because  he  never 


152  THE  EIVAL   GHOSTS. 

saw  either  the  domiciliary  or  the  titular  spook,  and 
partly  because  he  felt  himself  on  friendly  terms  with 
the  spirit  world,  and  did  n't  scare  easily.  But  after 
losing  three  nights'  sleep  and  the  society  of  his  friend, 
he  began  to  be  a  little  impatient,  and  to  think  that  the 
thing  had  gone  far  enough.  You  see,  while  in  a  way- 
he  was  fond  of  ghosts,  yet  he  liked  them  best  one  at 
a  time.  Two  ghosts  were  one  too  many.  He  was  n't 
bent  on  making  a  collection  of  spooks.  He  and  one 
ghost  were  company,  but  he  and  two  ghosts  were  a 
crowd." 

"  What  did  he  do  ?  "  asked  Baby  Van  Rensselaer. 

"  Well,  he  could  n't  do  anything.  He  waited  awhile, 
hoping  they  would  get  tired;  but  he  got  tired  out 
first.  You  see,  it  comes  natural  to  a  spook  to  sleep  in 
the  daytime,  but  a  man  wants  to  sleep  nights,  and  they 
would  n't  let  him  sleep  nights.  They  kept  on  wrang- 
ling and  quarrelling  incessantly ;  they  manifested  and 
they  dark-seanced  as  regularly  as  the  old  clock  on  the 
stairs  struck  twelve ;  they  rapped  and  they  rang  bells 
and  they  banged  the  tambourine  and  they  threw  the 
flaming  banjo  about  the  house,  and,  worse  than  all, 
they  swore." 

"  I  did  not  know  that  spirits  were  addicted  to  bad 
language,"  said  the  Duchess. 

"  How  did  he  know  they  were  swearing  ?  Could  he 
hear  them  ?  "  asked  Dear  Jones. 

"That  was  just  it,"  responded  Uncle  Larry;  "he 
could  not  hear  them  —  at  least  not  distinctly.  There 
were  inarticulate  murmurs  and  stifled  rumblings.  But 
the  impression  produced  on  him  was  that  they  were 


THE  EIVAL  GHOSTS.  153 

swearing.  If  they  had  only  sworn  right  out,  he  would 
not  have  minded  it  so  much,  because  he  would  have 
known  the  worst.  But  the  feeling  that  the  air  was  full 
of  suppressed  profanity  was  very  wearing,  and  after 
standing  it  for  a  week,  he  gave  up  in  disgust  and  went 
to  the  White  Mountains." 

"  Leaving  them  to  fight  it  out,  I  suppose,"  interjected 
Baby  Van  Rensselaer. 

"  Not  at  all,"  explained  Uncle  Larry.  "  They  could 
not  quarrel  unless  he  was  present.  You  see,  he  could 
not  leave  the  titular  ghost  behind  him,  and  the  domici- 
liary ghost  could  not  leave  the  house.  When  he  went 
away  he  took  the  family  ghost  with  him,  leaving  the 
house  ghost  behind.  Now  spooks  can't  quarrel  when 
they  are  a  hundred  miles  apart  any  more  than  men 
can." 

"And  what  happened  afterward?"  asked  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer,  with  a  pretty  impatience. 

"A  most  marvellous  thing  happened.  Eliphalet 
Duncan  went  to  the  White  Mountains,  and  in  the  car 
of  the  railroad  that  runs  to  the  top  of  Mount  Wash- 
ington he  met  a  classmate  whom  he  had  not  seen  for 
years,  and  this  classmate  introduced  Duncan  to  his  sis- 
ter, and  this  sister  was  a  remarkably  pretty  girl,  and 
Duncan  fell  in  love  with  her  at  first  sight,  and  by  the 
time  he  got  to  the  top  of  Mount  Washington  he  was 
so  deep  in  love  that  he  began  to  consider  his  own  un- 
worthiness,  and  to  wonder  whether  she  might  ever  be 
induced  to  care  for  him  a  little  —  ever  so  little." 

"  I  don't  think  that  is  so  marvellous  a  thing,"  said 
Dear  Jones,  glancing  at  Baby  Van  Rensselaer. 


154  THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS. 

"  Who  was  she  ?  "  asked  the  Duchess,  who  had  once 
lived  in  Philadelphia. 

"  She  was  Miss  Kitty  Sutton,  of  San  Francisco,  and 
she  was  a  daughter  of  old  Judge  Sutton,  of  the  firm  of 
Pixley  and  Sutton." 

"A  very  respectable  family,"  assented  the  Duch- 
ess. 

"I  hope  she  wasn't  a  daughter  of  that  loud  and 
vulgar  old  Mrs.  Sutton  whom  I  met  at  Saratoga,  one 
summer,  four  or  five  years  ago  ?  "  said  Dear  Jones. 

"  Probably  she  was." 

"  She  was  a  horrid  old  woman.  The  boys  used  to 
call  her  Mother  Gorgon." 

"The  pretty  Kitty  Sutton  with  whom  Eliphalet 
Duncan  had  fallen  in  love  was  the  daughter  of  Mother 
Gorgon.  But  he  never  saw  the  mother,  who  was  in 
'Frisco,  or  Los  Angeles,  or  Santa  Fe,  or  somewhere  out 
West,  and  he  saw  a  great  deal  of  the  daughter,  who 
was  up  in  the  White  Mountains.  She  was  travelling 
with  her  brother  and  his  wife,  and  as  they  journeyed 
from  hotel  to  hotel,  Duncan  went  with  them,  and  filled 
out  the  quartette.  Before  the  end  of  the  summer  he 
began  to  think  about  proposing.  Of  course  he  had 
lots  of  chances,  going  on  excursions  as  they  were 
every  day.  He  made  up  his  mind  to  seize  the  first 
opportunity,  and  that  very  evening  he  took  her  out 
for  a  moonlight  row  on  Lake  Winnipiseogee.  As  he 
handed  her  into  the  boat  he  resolved  to  do  it,  and  he 
had  a  glimmer  of  a  suspicion  that  she  knew  he  was 
going  to  do  it,  too." 

"  Girls,"  said  Dear  Jones,  "  never  go  out  in  a  row- 


THE  RIVAL   GHOSTS.  155 

boat  at  night  with  a  young  man  unless  you  mean  to 
accept  him." 

"  Sometimes  it 's  best  to  refuse  him,  and  get  it  over 
once  for  all,"  said  Baby  Van  Rensselaer. 

"As  Eliphalet  took  the  oars  he  felt  a  sudden  chill. 
He  tried  to  shake  it  off,  but  in  vain.  He  began  to 
have  a  growing  consciousness  of  impending  evil.  Be- 
fore he  had  taken  ten  strokes  —  and  he  was  a  swift 
oarsman  —  he  was  aware  of  a  mysterious  presence  be- 
tween him  and  Miss  Sutton." 

"  Was  it  the  guardian-angel  ghost  warning  him  off 
the  match  ?  "  interrupted  Dear  Jones. 

"  That 's  just  what  it  was,"  said  Uncle  Larry.  "  And 
he  yielded  to  it,  and  kept  his  peace,  and  rowed  Miss 
Sutton  back  to  the  hotel  with  his  proposal  unspoken." 

"More  fool  he,"  said  Dear  Jones.  "It  will  take 
more  than  one  ghost  to  keep  me  from  proposing  when 
my  mind  is  made  up."  And  he  looked  at  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer. 

"The  next  morning,"  continued  Uncle  Larry, 
"  Eliphalet  overslept  himself,  and  when  he  went  down 
to  a  late  breakfast  he  found  that  the  Suttons  had  gone 
to  New  York  by  the  morning  train.  He  wanted  to 
follow  them  at  once,  and  again  he  felt  the  mysterious 
presenca  overpowering  his  will.  He  struggled  two 
days,  and  at  last  he  roused  himself  to  do  what  he 
wanted  in  spite  of  the  spook.  When  he  arrived  in 
New  York  it  was  late  in  the  evening.  He  dressed 
himself  hastily,  and  went  to  the  hotel  where  the  Sut- 
tons put  up,  in  the  hope  of  seeing  at  least  her  brother. 
The  guardian  angel  fought  every  inch  of  the  walk  with 


156  TnE  RIVAL   GHOSTS. 

him,  until  he  began  to  wonder  whether,  if  Miss  Sutton 
were  to  take  him,  the  spook  would  forbid  the  banns. 
At  the  hotel  he  saw  no  one  that  night,  and  he  went 
home  determined  to  call  as  early  as  he  could  the  next 
afternoon,  and  make  an  end  of  it.  When  he  left  his 
office  about  two  o'clock  the  next  day  to  learn  his  fate, 
he  had  not  walked  five  blocks  before  he  discovered 
that  the  wraith  of  the  Duncans  had  withdrawn  his  op- 
position to  the  suit.  There  was  no  feeling  of  impend- 
ing evil,  no  resistance,  no  struggle,  no  consciousness  of 
an  opposing  presence.  Eliphalet  was  greatly  encour- 
aged. He  walked  briskly  to  the  hotel ;  he  found  Miss 
Sutton  alone.  He  asked  her  the  question,  and  got  his 
answer." 

"  She  accepted  him,  of  course,"  said  Baby  Van  Rens- 
selaer. 

"  Of  course,"  said  Uncle  Larry.  "  And  while  they 
were  in  the  first  flush  of  joy,  swapping  confidences  and 
confessions,  her  brother  came  into  the  parlor  with  an 
expression  of  pain  on  his  face  and  a  telegram  in  his 
hand.  The  former  was  caused  by  the  latter,  which 
was  from  'Frisco,  and  which  announced  the  sudden 
death  of  Mrs.  Sutton,  their  mother." 

"And  that  was  why  the  ghost  no  longer  opposed 
the  match?"  questioned  Dear  Jones. 

"Exactly.  You  see,  the  family  ghost  knew  that 
Mother  Gorgon  was  an  awful  obstacle  to  Duncan's 
happiness,  so  it  warned  him,  But  the  moment  the 
obstacle  was  removed,  it  gave  its  consent  at  once." 

The  fog  was  lowering  its  thick  damp  curtain,  and  it 
was  beginning  to  be  difficult  to  see  from  one  end  of  the 


THE  RIVAL   GHOSTS.  157 

boat  to  the  other.  Dear  Jones  tightened  the  rug  which 
enwrapped  Baby  Van  Rensselaer,  and  then  withdrew 
again  into  his  own  substantial  coverings. 

Uncle  Larry  paused  in  his  story  long  enough  to  light 
another  of  the  tiny  cigars  he  always  smoked. 

"I  infer  that  Lord  Duncan" — the  Duchess  was 
scrupulous  in  the  bestowal  of  titles  —  "  saw  no  more  of 
the  ghosts  after  he  was  married." 

"  He  never  saw  them  at  all,  at  any  time,  either  be- 
fore or  since.  But  they  came  very  near  breaking  off 
the  match,  and  thus  breaking  two  young  hearts." 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say  that  they  knew  any  just 
cause  or  impediment  why  they  should  not  forever  after 
hold  their  peace  ?  "  asked  Dear  -Jones. 

"  How  could  a  ghost,  or  even  two  ghosts,  keep  a  girl 
from  marrying  the*  man  she  loved  ?  "  This  was  Baby 
Van  Rensselaer's  question. 

"It  seems  curious,  doesn't  it?"  and  Uncle  Larry 
tried  to  warm  himself  by  two  or  three  sharp  pulls  at 
his  fiery  little  cigar.  "And  the  circumstances  are 
quite  as  curious  as  the  fact  itself.  You  see,  Miss  Sut- 
ton  would  n't  be  married  for  a  year  after  her  mother's 
death,  so  she  and  Duncan  had  lots  of  time  to  tell  each 
other  all  they  knew.  Eliphalet,  he  got  to  know  a  good 
deal  about  the  girls  she  went  to  school  with,  and  Kitty, 
she  learned  all  about  his  family.  He  did  n't  tell  her 
about  the  title  for  a  long  time,  as  he  wasn't  one  to 
brag.  But  he  described  to  her  the  little  old  house  at 
Salem.  And  one  evening  toward  the  end  of  the  sum- 
mer, the  wedding-day  having  been  appointed  for  early 
in  September,  she  told  him  that  she  didn't  want  a 


158  THE  RIVAL   GHOSTS. 

bridal  tour  at  all ;  she  just  wanted  to  go  down  to  the 
little  old  house  at  Salem  to  spend  her  honeymoon  in 
peace  and  quiet,  with  nothing  to  do  and  nobody  to 
bother  them.  Well,  Kliphalet  jumped  at  the  sugges- 
tion :  it  suited  him  down  to  the  ground.  All  of  a  sud- 
den he  remembered  the  spooks,  and  it  knocked  him  all 
of  a  heap.  He  had  told  her  about  the  Duncan  banshee, 
and  the  idea  of  having  an  ancestral  ghost  in  personal 
attendance  on  her  husband  tickled  her  immensely. 
But  he  had  never  said  anything  about  the  ghost  which 
haunted  the  little  old  house  at  Salem.  He  knew  she 
would  be  frightened  out  of  her  wits  if  the  house  ghost 
revealed  itself  to  her,  and  he  saw  at  once  that  it  would 
be  impossible  to  go  to  Salem  on  their  wedding  trip. 
So  he  told  her  all  about  it,  and  Sow  whenever  he  went 
to  Salem  the  two  ghosts  interfered,  and  gave  dark 
seances  and  manifested  and  materialized  and  made  the 
place  absolutely  impossible.  Kitty,  she  listened  in 
silence,  and  Eliphalet,  he  thought  she  had  changed  her 
mind.  But  she  had  n't  done  anything  of  the  kind." 

"  Just  like  a  man  —  to  think  she  was  going  to,"  re- 
marked Baby  Van  Rensselaer. 

"  She  just  told  him  she  could  not  bear  ghosts  herself, 
but  she  would  not  marry  a  man  who  was  afraid  of 
them." 

"  Just  like  a  girl  —  to  be  so  inconsistent,"  remarked 
Dear  Jones. 

Uncle  Larry's  tiny  cigar  had  long  been  extinct.  He 
lighted  a  new  one,  and  continued :  "  Eliphalet  pro- 
tested in  vain.  Kitty  said  her  mind  was  made  up. 
She  was  determined  to  pass  her  honeymoon  in  the 


THE  EIVAL   GHOSTS.  159 

little  old  house  at  Salem,  and  she  was  equally  deter- 
mined not  to  go  there  as  long  as  there  were  any  ghosts 
there.  Until  he  could  assure  her  that  the  spectral  ten- 
ant had  received  notice  to  quit,  and  that  there  was  no 
danger  of  manifestations  and  materializing,  she  refused 
to  be  married  at  all.  She  did  not  intend  to  have  her 
honeymoon  interrupted  by  two  wrangling  ghosts,  and 
the  wedding  could  be  postponed  until  he  had  made 
ready  the  house  for  her." 

"  She  was  an  unreasonable  young  woman,"  said  the 
Duchess. 

"  Well,  that 's  what  Eliphalet  thought,  much  as  he 
was  in  love  with  her.  And  he  believed  he  could  talk 
her  out  of  her  determination.  But  he  could  n't.  She 
was  set.  And  when  a  girl  is  set,  there 's  nothing  to  do 
but  to  yield  to  the  inevitable.  And  that's  just  what 
Eliphalet  did.  He  saw  he  would  either  have  to  give 
her  up  or  to  get  the  ghosts  out ;  and  as  he  loved  her 
and  did  not  care  for  the  ghosts,  he  resolved  to  tackle 
the  ghosts.  He  had  clear  grit,  Eliphalet  had  —  he  was 
half  Scotch  and  half  Yankee,  and  neither  breed  turns 
tail  in  a  hurry.  So  he  made  his  plans  and  he  went 
down  to  Salem.  As  he  said  good-by  to  Kitty  he  had 
an  impression  that  she  was  sorry  she  had  made  him  go, 
but  she  kept  up  bravely,  and  put  a  bold  face  on  it,  and 
saw  him  off,  and  went  home  and  cried  for  an  hour,  and 
was  perfectly  miserable  until  he  came  back  the  next 
day." 

"  Did  he  succeed  in  driving  the  ghosts  away  ? " 
asked  Baby  Van  Rensselaer,  with  great  interest. 

"That's  just   what   I'm   coming  to,"   said   Uncle 


160  THE  RIVAL   GHOSTS. 

Larry,  pausing  at  the  critical  moment,  in  the  manner 
of  the  trained  story-teller.  "You  see,  Eliphalet  had 
got  a  rather  tough  job,  and  he  would  gladly  have  had 
an  extension  of  time  on  the  contract,  but  he  had  to 
choose  between  the  girl  and  the  ghosts,  and  he  wanted 
the  girl.  He  tried  to  invent  or  remember  some  short 
and  easy  way  with  ghosts,  but  he  could  n't.  He  wished 
that  somebody  had  invented  a  specific  for  spooks  — 
something  that  would  make  the  ghosts  come  out  of  the 
house  and  die  in  the  yard.  He  wondered  if  he  could 
not  tempt  the  ghosts  to  run  in  debt,  so  that  he  might 
get  the  sheriff  to  help  him.  He  wondered  also  whether 
the  ghosts  could  not  be  overcome  with  strong  drink  — 
a  dissipated  spook,  a  spook  with  delirium  tremens, 
might  be  committed  to  the  inebriate  asylum.  But 
none  of  these  things  seemed  feasible." 

"  What  did  he  do  ?  "  interrupted  Dear  Jones.  "  The 
learned  counsel  will  please  speak  to  the  point." 

"  You  will  regret  this  unseemly  haste,"  said  Uncle 
Larry,  gravely,  "when  you  know  what  really  hap- 
pened. 

"What  was  it,  Uncle  Larry?"  asked  Baby  Van 
Rensselaer.  "I'm  all  impatience." 

And  Uncle  Larry  proceeded  : 

"Eliphalet  went  down  to  the  little  old  house  at 
Salem,  and  as  soon  as  the  clock  struck  twelve  the  rival 
ghosts  began  wrangling  as  before.  Raps  here,  there, 
and  everywhere,  ringing  bells,  banging  tambourines, 
strumming  banjos  sailing  about  the  room,  and  all  the 
other  manifestations  and  materializations  followed  one 
another  just  as  they  had  the  summer  before.  The  only 


THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS.  161 

difference  Eliphalet  could  detect  was  a  stronger  flavor 
in  the  spectral  profanity;  and  this,  of  course,  was  only  a 
vague  impression,  for  he  did  not  actually  hear  a  single 
word.  He  waited  awhile  in  patience,  listening  and 
watching.  Of  course  he  never  saw  either  of  the  ghosts, 
because  neither  of  them  could  appear  to  him.  At  last 
he  got  his  dander  up,  and  he  thought  it  was  about  time 
to  interfere,  so  he  rapped  on  the  table,  and  asked  for 
silence.  As  soon  as  he  felt  that  the  spooks  were  listen- 
ing to  him  he  explained  the  situation  to  them.  He 
told  them  he  was  in  love,  and  that  he  could  not  marry 
unless  they  vacated  the  house.  He  appealed  to  tlic-m 
as  old  friends,  and  he  laid  claim  to  their  gratitude.  The 
titular  ghost  had  been  sheltered  by  the  Duncan  family 
for  hundreds  of  years,  and  the  domiciliary  ghost  had 
had  free  lodging  in  the  little  old  house  at  Salem  for 
nearly  two  centuries.  He  implored  them  to  settle  their 
differences,  and  to  get  him  out  of  his  difficulty  at  once. 
He  suggested  that  they  had  better  fight  it  out  then  and 
there,  and  see  who  was  master.  He  had  brought  down 
with  him  all  needful  weapons.  And  he  pulled  out  his 
valise,  and  spread  on  the  table  a  pair  of  navy  revolvers, 
a  pair  of  shot-guns,  a  pair  of  duelling  swords,  and  a 
couple  of  bowie-knives.  He  offered  to  serve  as  second 
for  both  parties,  and  to  give  the  word  when  to  begin. 
He  also  took  out  of  his  valise  a  pack  of  cards  and  a 
bottle  of  poison,  telling  them  that  if  they  wished  to 
avoid  carnage  they  might  cut  the  cards  to  see  which 
one  should  take  the  poison.  Then  he  waited  anxiously 
for  their  reply.  For  a  little  space  there  was  silence. 
Then  he  became  conscious  of  a  tremulous  shivering  in 


162  THE  RIVAL  GHOSTS. 

one  corner  of  the  room,  and  he  remembered  that  he 
had  heard  from  that  direction  what  sounded  like  a 
frightened  sigh  when  he  made  the  first  suggestion  of 
the  duel.  Something  told  him  that  this  was  the  domi- 
ciliary ghost,  and  that  it  was  badly  scared.  Then  he 
was  impressed  by  a  certain  movement  in  the  opposite 
corner  of  the  room,  as  though  the  titular  ghost  were 
drawing  himself  up  with  offended  dignity.  Eliphalet 
could  n't  exactly  see  these  things,  because  he  never  saw 
the  ghosts,  but  he  felt  them.  After  a  silence  of  nearly 
a  minute  a  voice  came  from  the  corner  where  the 
family  ghost  stood  —  a  voice  strong  and  full,  but  trem- 
bling slightly  with  suppressed  passion.  And  this  voice 
told  Eliphalet  it  was  plain  enough  that  he  had  not  long 
been  the  head  of  the  Duncans,  and  that  he  had  never 
properly  considered  the  characteristics  of  his  race  if 
now  he  supposed  that  one  of  his  blood  could  draw  his 
sword  against  a  woman.  Eliphalet  said  he  had  never 
suggested  that  the  Duncan  ghost  should  raise  his  hand 
against  a  woman,  and  all  he  wanted  was  that  the  Dun- 
can ghost  should  fight  the  other  ghost.  And  then  the 
voice  told  Eliphalet  that  the  other  ghost  was  a  woman." 

"What?"  said  Dear  Jones,  sitting  up  suddenly. 
"You  don't  mean  to  tell  me  that  the  ghost  which 
haunted  the  house  was  a  woman?" 

"  Those  were  the  very  words  Eliphalet  Duncan 
used,"  said  Uncle  Larry;  "but  he  did  not  need  to 
wait  for  the  answer.  All  at  once  he  recalled  the  tra- 
ditions about  the  domiciliary  ghost,  and  he  knew  that 
what  the  titular  ghost  said  was  the  fact.  He  had  never 
thought  of  the  sex  of  a  spook,  but  there  was  no  doubt 


THE  RIVAL   GHOSTS.  163 

whatever  that  the  house  ghost  was  a  woman.  No 
sooner  was  this  firmly  fixed  in  Eliphalet's  mind  than 
he  saw  his  way  out  of  the  difficulty.  The  ghosts  must 
be  married !  —  for  then  there  would  be  no  more  inter- 
ference, no  more  quarrelling,  no  more  manifestations 
and  materializations,  no  more  dark  seances,  with  their 
raps  and  bells  and  tambourines  and  banjos.  At  first 
the  ghosts  would  not  hear  of  it.  The  voice  in  the  cor- 
ner declared  that  the  Duncan  wraith  had  never  thought 
of  matrimony.  But  Eliphalet  argued  with  them,  and 
pleaded  and  persuaded  and  coaxed,  and  dwelt  on  the 
advantages  of  matrimony.  He  had  to  confess,  of 
course,  that  he  did  not  know  how  to  get  a  clergyman 
to  marry  them ;  but  the  voice  from  the  corner  gravely 
told  him  that  there  need  be  no  difficulty  in  regard  to 
that,  as  there  was  no  lack  of  spiritual  chaplains.  Then, 
for  the  first  time,  the  house  ghost  spoke,  in  a  low,  clear, 
gentle  voice,  and  with  a  quaint,  old-fashioned  New 
England  accent,  which  contrasted  sharply  with  the 
broad  Scotch  speech  of  the  family  ghost.  She  said 
that  Eliphalet  Duncan  seemed  to  have  forgotten  that 
she  was  married.  But  this  did  not  upset  Eliphalet  at 
all ;  he  remembered  the  whole  case  clearly,  and  he  told 
her  she  was  not  a  married  ghost,  but  a  widow,  since 
her  husband  had  been  hung  for  murdering  her.  Then 
the  Duncan  ghost  drew  attention  to  the  great  disparity 
in  their  ages,  saying  that  he  was  nearly  four  hundred 
and  fifty  years  old,  while  she  was  barely  two  hundred. 
But  Eliphalet  had  not  talked  to  juries  for  nothing ;  he 
just  buckled  to,  and  coaxed  those  ghosts  into  matri- 
mony. Afterward  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  they 


164  THE  RIVAL   GHOSTS. 

were  willing  to  be  coaxed,  but  at  the  time  he  thought 
he  had  pretty  hard  work  to  convince  them  of  the 
advantages  of  the  plan." 

"  Did  he  succeed  ?  "  asked  Baby  Van  Rensselaer,  with 
a  young  lady's  interest  in  matrimony. 

"  He  did,"  said  Uncle  Larry.  "  He  talked  the  wraith 
of  the  Duncans  and  the  spectre  of  the  little  old  house 
at  Salem  into  a  matrimonial  engagement.  And  from 
the  time  they  were  engaged  he  had  no  more  trouble 
with  them.  They  were  rival  ghosts  no  longer.  They 
were  married  by  their  spiritual  chaplain  the  very  same 
day  that  Eliphalet  Duncan  met  Kitty  Sutton  in  front 
of  the  railing  of  Grace  Church.  The  ghostly  bride  and 
bridegroom  went  away  at  once  on  their  bridal  tour,  and 
Lord  and  Lady  Duncan  went  down  to  the  little  old 
house  at  Salem  to  pass  their  honeymoon." 

Uncle  Larry  stopped.  His  tiny  cigar  was  out  again. 
The  tale  of  the  rival  ghosts  was  told.  A  solemn  silence 
fell  on  the  little  party  on  the  deck  of  the  ocean  steamer, 
broken  harshly  by  the  hoarse  roar  of  the  fog-horn. 


A  LETTER  A1STO  A  PARAGEAPH. 

BY  H.  C.  BUNNER. 


THE  LETTER. 

NEW  YORK,  Nov.  16, 1883. 
MY  DEAR  WILL:  — 

You  cannot  be  expected  to  remember  it,  but  this 
is  the  fifth  anniversary  of  my  wedding-day,  and  to- 
morrow—  it  will  be  to-morrow  before  this  letter  is 
closed  —  is  my  birthday  —  my  fortieth.  My  head  is 
full  of  those  thoughts  which  the  habit  of  my  life  moves 
me  to  put  on  paper,  where  I  can  best  express  them ; 
and  yet  which  must  be  written  for  only  the  friendliest 
of  eyes.  It  is  not  the  least  of  my  happiness  in  this  life 
that  I  have  one  friend  to  whom  I  can  unlock  my  heart 
as  I  can  to  you. 

The  wife  has  just  been  putting  your  namesake  to 
sleep.  Don't  infer  that,  even  on  the  occasion  of  this 
family  feast,  he  has  been  allowed  to  sit  up  until  half  past 
eleven.  He  went  to  bed  properly  enough,  with  a  tear 
or  two,  at  eight ;  but  when  his  mother  stole  into  his 
room  just  now,  after  her  custom,  I  heard  his  small 
voice  raised  in  drowsy  inquiry;  and  I  followed  her, 
and  slipped  the  curtain  of  the  doorway  aside,  and 
looked.  But  I  did  not  go  into  «the  room. 

165 


166  ^  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH. 

The  shaded  lamp  was  making  a  yellow  glory  in  one 
spot  —  the  head  of  the  little  brass  crib  where  my  wife 
knelt  by  my  boy.  I  saw  the  little  face,  so  like  hers, 
turned  up  to  her.  There  was  a  smile  on  it  that  I  knew 
was  a  reflection  of  hers.  He  was  winking  in  a  merry 
half-attempt  to  keep  awake;  but  wakef illness  .was 
slipping  away  from  him  under  the  charm  of  that  smile 
that  I  could  not  see.  His  brown  eyes  closed,  and 
opened  for  an  instant,  and  closed  again  as  the  tender, 
happy  hush  of  a  child's  sleep  settled  down  upon  him, 
and  he  was  gone  where  we  in  our  heavier  slumbers  shall 
hardly  follow  him.  Then,  before  I  could  see  my  wife's 
face  as  she  bent  and  kissed  him,  I  let  the  curtain  fall^ 
and  crept  back  here,  to  sit  by  the  last  of  the  fire,  and 
see  that  sacred  sight  again  with  the  spiritual  eyes,  and 
to  dream  wonderingly  over  the  unspeakable  happiness 
that  has  in  some  mysterious  way  come  to  me,  unde- 
serving. 

I  tell  you,  Will,  that  moment  was  to  me  like  one  of 
those  moments  of  waking  that  we  know  in  childhood, 
when  we  catch  the  going  of  a  dream  too  subtly  sweet 
to  belong  to  this  earth  —  a  glad  vision,  gone  before  our 
eyes  can  open  wide ;  not  to  be  figured  into  any  earthly 
idea,  leaving  in  its  passage  a  joy  so  high  and  fine  that 
the  poets  tell  us  it  is  a  memory  of  some  heaven  from 
which  our  young  souls  are  yet  fresh. 

You  can  understand  how  it  is  that  I  find  it  hard  to 
realize  that  there  can  be  such  things  in  my  life ;  for 
you  know  what  that  life  was  up  to  a  few  years  ago. 
I  am  like  a  man  who  has  spent  his  first  thirty  years  in 
a  cave.  It  takes  more  than  a  decade  above  ground 


A    LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH.  167 

to  make  him  quite  believe  in  the  sun  and  the  blue  of 
the  sky. 

I  was  sitting  just  now  before  the  hearth,  with  my 
feet  in  the  bearskin  rug  you  sent  us  two  Christmases 
ago.  The  light  of  the  low  wood  fire  was  chasing  the 
shadows  around  the  room,  over  my  books  and  my 
pictures,  and  all  the  fine  and  gracious  luxuries  with 
which  I  may  now  make  my  eyes  and  my  heart  glad, 
and  pamper  the  tastes  that  grow  with  feeding.  I  was 
taking  count,  so  to  speak,  of  my  prosperity  —  the 
material  treasures,  the  better  treasure  that  I  find  in 
such  portion  of  fame  as  the  world  has  allotted  me,  and 
the  treasure  of  treasures  across  the  threshold  of  the 
next  room  —  in  the  next  room?  No  —  there,  here,  in 
every  room,  in  every  corner  of  the  house,  filling  it  with 
peace,  is  the  gentle  and  holy  spirit  of  love. 

As  I  sat  and  thought,  my  mind  went  back  to  the  day 
that  you  and  I  first  met,  twenty-two  years  ago  — 
twenty-two  in  February  next.  In  twenty-two  years 
more  I  could  not  forget  that  hideous  first  day  in  the 
city  room  of  the  Morning  JRecord.  I  can  see  the  great 
gloomy  room,  with  its  meagre  gas-jets  lighting  up,  here 
and  there,  a  pale  face  at  a  desk,  and  bringing  out  in 
ghastly  spots  the  ugliness  of  the  ink-smeared  walls. 
A  winter  rain  was  pouring  down  outside.  I  could  feel 
its  chill  and  damp  in  the  room,  though  little  of  it  was 
to  be  seen  through  the  grimy  window-panes.  The 
composing-room  in  the  rear  sent  a  smell  of  ink  and 
benzine  to  permeate  the  moist  atmosphere.  The 
rumble  and  shiver  of  the  great  presses  printing  the 
weekly  came  up  from  below.  I  sat  there  in  my  wet 


168  A  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH. 

clothes  and  waited  for  my  first  assignment.  I  was 
eighteen,  poor  as  a  church  mouse,  green,  desperately 
hopeful  after  a  boy's  fashion,  and  with  nothing  in  my 
head  but  the  Latin  and  Greek  of  my  one  single  year  at 
college.  My  spirit  had  sunk  down  far  out  of  sight. 
My  heart  beat  nervously  at  every  sound  of  that  awful 
city  editor's  voice,  as  he  called  up  his  soldiers  one  by 
one  and  assigned  them  to  duty.  I  could  only  silently 
pray  that  he  would  "  give  me  an  easy  one,"  and  that  I 
should  not  disgrace  myself  in  the  doing  of  it.  By  Jove, 
Will,  what  an  old  martinet  Baldwin  was,  for  all  his 
good  heart !  Do  you  remember  that  sharp,  crackling 
voice  of  his,  and  the  awful  "  Be  brief !  be  brief ! "  that 
always  drove  all  capacity  for  condensation  out  of  a 
man's  head,  and  set  him  to  stammering  out  his  story 
with  wordy  incoherence  ?  Baldwin  is  on  the  Record 
still.  I  wonder  what  poor  devil  is  trembling  at  this 
hour  under  that  disconcerting  adjuration. 

A  wretched  day  that  was !  The  hours  went  slow  as 
grief.  Smeary  little  bare-armed  fiends  trotted  in  from 
the  composing-room  and  out  again,  bearing  fluttering 
galley-proofs.  Bedraggled,  hollow-eyed  men  came  in 
from  the  streets "  and  set  their  soaked  umbrellas  to 
steam  against  the  heater,  and  passed  into  the  lion's  den 
to  feed  him  with  news,  and  were  sent  out  again  to  take 
up  their  half-cooked  umbrellas  and  go  forth  to  forage 
for  more.  Everyone,  I  thought,  gave  me  one  brief 
glance  of  contempt  and  curiosity,  and  put  me  out  of 
his  thoughts,  Everyone  had  some  business  —  every- 
one but  me.  The  men  who  had  been  waiting  with  me 
were  called  up  one  by  one  and  detailed  to  work.  I  was 
left  alone. 


A  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH.  169 

Then  a  new  horror  came  to  torture  my  nervously 
active  imagination.  Had  my  superior  officer  forgotten 
his  new  recruit?  Or  could  he  find  no  task  mean 
enough  for  my  powers?  This  filled  me  at  first  with 
a  sinking  shame,  and  then  with  a  hot  rage  and  sense 
of  wrong.  Why  should  he  thus  slight  me?  Had  I 
not  a  right  to  be  tried,  at  least  ?  Was  there  any  duty 
he  could  find  that  I  would  not  perform  or  die?  I 
would  go  to  him  and  tell  him  that  I  had  come  there 
to  work ;  and  would  make  him  give  me  the  work.  No, 
I  should  simply  be  snubbed,  and  sent  to  iny  seat  like 
a  schcol-boy,  or  perhaps  discharged  on  the  spot.  I 
must  bear  my  humiliation  in  silence. 

I  looked  up  and  saw  you  entering,  with  your  bright, 
ruddy  boy's  face  shining  with  wet,  beaming  a  greet- 
ing to  all  the  room.  In  my  soul  I  cursed  you,  at  a 
venture,  for  your  lightheartedness  and  your  look  of 
cheery  self-confidence.  What  a  vast  stretch  of  struggle 
and  success  set  you  above  me  —  you,  the  reporter, 
above  me,  the  novice!  And  just  then  came  the  awful 
summons  —  "  Barclay !  Barclay !  " —  I  shall  hear  that 
strident  note  at  the  judgment  day.  I  went  in  and 
got  my  orders,  and  came  out  with  them,  all  in  a  sort  of 
daze  that  must  have  made  Baldwin  think  me  an  idiot. 
And  then  you  came  up  to  me  and  scraped  acquaint- 
ance in  a  desultory  way,  to  hide  your  kind  intent ;  and 
gave  me  a  hint  or  two  as  to  how  to  obtain  a  full 
account  of  the  biennial  meeting  of  the  Post-Pliocene 
Mineralogical  Society,  or  whatever  it  was,  without  div- 
ing too  deeply  into  the  Post-Pliocene  period.  I  would 
have  fought  for  yon  to  the  death,  at  that  moment. 


170  ^  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH. 

T  was  a  small  matter,  but  the  friendship  begun  in 
manly  and  helpful  kindness  has  gone  on  for  twenty- 
two  years  in  mutual  faith  and  loyalty ;  and  the  growth 
dignifies  the  seed. 

A  sturdy  growth  it  was  in  its  sapling  days.  It  was 
in  the  late  spring  that  we  decided  to  take  the  room 
together  in  St.  Mark's  Place.  A  big  room  and  a  poor 
room,  indeed,  on  the  third  story  of  that  "battered 
caravanserai,"  and  for  twelve  long  years  it  held  us 
and  our  hopes  and  our  despairs  and  our  troubles  and 
our  joys. 

I  don't  think  I  have  forgotten  one  detail  of  that  room. 
There  is  the  generous  old  fireplace,  insultingly  bricked 
up  by  modern  poverty,  all  save  the  meagre  niche  that 
holds  our  fire  —  when  we  can  have  a  fire.  There  is  the 
great  second-hand  table  —  our  first  purchase  —  where 
we  sit  and  work  for  immortality  in  the  scant  intervals 
of  working  for  life.  Your  drawer,  with  the  manuscript 
of  your  "  Concordance  of  Political  Economy,"  is  to  the 
right.  Mine  is  to  the  left ;  it  holds  the  unfinished  play, 
and  the  poems  that  might  better  have  been  unfinished. 
There  are  the  two  narrow  cots  —  yours  to  the  left  of 
the  door  as  you  enter ;  mine  to  the  right. 

How  strange  that  I  can  see  it  all  so  clearly,  now  that 
all  is  different ! 

Yet  I  can  remember  myself  coming  home  at  one 
o'clock  at  night,  dragging  my  tired  feet  up  those  dark, 
still,  tortuous  stairs,  gripping  the  shaky  baluster  for 
aid.  I  open  the  door  —  I  can  feel  the  little  old-fash- 
ioned brass  knob  in  my  palm  even  now  —  and  I  look  to 
the  left.  Ah,  you  are  already  at  home  and  in  bed. 


A  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGEAPU. 

I  need  not  look  toward  the  table.  There  is  money  —  a 
little  —  in  the  common  treasury;  and,  in  accordance 
with  our  regular  compact,  I  know  there  stand  on  that 
table  twin  bottles  of  beer,  half  a  loaf  of  rye  bread,  and 
a  double  palm's-breadth  of  Swiss  cheese.  You  are 
staying  your  hunger  in  sleep  ;  for  one  may  not  eat  until 
the  other  comes.  I  will  wake  you  up,  and  we  shall 
feast  together  and  talk  over  the  day  that  is  dead  and 
the  day  that  is  begun. 

Strange,  is  it  not,  that  I  should  have  some  trouble 
to  realize  that  this  is  only  a  memory,  —  I,  with  my  feet 
in  the  bearskin  rug  that  it  would  have  beggared  the 
two  of  us,  or  a  dozen  like,  us,  to  purchase  in  those  days. 
Strange  that  my  mind  should  be  wandering  on  the 
crude  work  of  my  boyhood  and  my  early  manhood. 
I  who  have  won  name  and  fame,  as  the  world  would 
say.  I,  to  whom  young  men  come  for  advice  and  en- 
couragement, as  to  a  tried  veteran !  Strange  that  I 
should  be  thinking  of  a  time  when  even  your  true  and 
tireless  friendship  could  not  quench  a  subtle  hunger  at 
my  heart,  a  hunger  for  a  more  dear  and  intimate 
comradeship.  I,  with  the  tenderest  of  wives  scarce 
out  of  my  sight ;  even  in  her  sleep  she  is  no  further 
from  me  than  my  own  soul. 

Strangest  of  all  this,  that  the  mad  agony  of  grief, 
the  passion  of  desolation  that  came  upon  me  when  our 
long  partnership  was  dissolved  for  ever,  should  now  be 
nothing  but  a  memory,  like  other  memories,  to  be 
summoned  up  out  of  the  resting-places  of  the  mind, 
toyed  with,  idly  questioned,  and  dismissed  with  a  sigh 
and  a  smile !  What  a  real  thing  it  was  just  ten 


172  A  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH. 

years  ago ;  what  a  very  present  pain !  Believe  me, 
Will,  —  yes,  I  want  you  to  believe  this  —  that  in  those 
first  hours  of  loneliness  I  could  have  welcomed  death ; 
death  would  have  fallen  upon  me  as  calmly  as  sleep 
has  fallen  upon  my  boy  in  the  room  beyond  there. 

You  knew  nothing  of  this  then ;  I  suppose  you  but 
half  believe  it  now ;  for  our  parting  was  manly  enough. 
I  kept  as  stiff  an  upper  lip  as  you  did,  for  all  there  was 
less  hair  on  it.  Perhaps  it  seems  extravagant  to  you. 
But  there  was  a  deal  of  difference  between  our  cases. 
You  had  turned  your  pen  to  money-making,  at  the  call 
of  love;  you  were  going  to  Stillwater  to  marry  the 
judge's  daughter,  and  to  become  a  great  land-owner 
and  mayor  of  Stillwater  and  millionaire  —  or  what  is  it 
now  ?  And  much  of  this  you  foresaw  or  hoped  for,  at 
least.  Hope  is  something.  But  for  me  ?  I  was  left 
in  the  third-story  of  a  poor  lodging-house  in  St.  Mark's 
Place,  my  best  friend  gone  from  me ;  with  neither 
remembrance  nor  hope  of  Love  to  live  on,  and  with  my 
last  story  back  from  all  the  magazines. 

We  will  not  talk  about  it.  Let  me  get  back  to  my 
pleasant  library  with  the  books  and  the  pictures  and 
the  glancing  fire-light,  and  me  with  my  feet  in  your 
bearskin  rug,  listening  to  my  wife's  step  in  the  next 
room. 

To  your  ear,  for  our  communion  has  been  so  long 
and  so  close  that  to  either  one  of  us  the  faintest  inflec- 
tion of  the  other's  voice  speaks  clearer  than  formulated 
words ;  to  your  ear  there  must  be  something  akin  to  a 
tone  of  regret — regret  for  the  old  days  —  in  what  I  have 
just  said.  And  would  it  be  strange  if  there  were  ?  A 


A  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH.  173 

poor  soldier  of  fortune  who  had  been  set  to  a  man's  work 
before  he  had  done  with  his  meagre  boyhood,  who  had 
passed  from  recruit  to  the  pface  of  a  young  veteran  in 
that  great,  hard-lighting,  unresting  pioneer  army  of 
journalism ;  was  he  the  man,  all  of  a  sudden,  to  stretch 
his  toughened  sinews  out  and  let  them  relax  in  the 
glow  of  the  home  hearth  ?  Would  not  his  legs  begin 
to  twitch  for  the  road ;  would  he  not  be  wild  to  feel 
again  the  rain  in  his  weather-beaten  face  ?  Would  you 
think  it  strange  if  at  night  he  should  toss  in  his  white, 
soft  bed,  longing  to  change  it  for  a  blanket  on  the  turf, 
with  the  broad  procession  of  sunlit  worlds  sweeping 
over  his  head,  beyond  the  blue  spaces  of  the  night? 
And  even  if  the  dear  face  on  the  pillow  next  him  were 
to  wake  and  look  at  him  with  reproachful  surprise; 
and  even  if  warm  arms  drew  him  back  to  his  new 
allegiance  ;  would  not  his  heart  in  dreams  go  throbbing 
to  the  rhythm  of  the  drum  or  the  music  of  songs  sung 
by  the  camp-fire  ? 

It  was  so  at  the  beginning,  in  the  incredible  happiness 
of  the  first  year,  and  even  after  the  boy's  birth.  Do 
you  know,  it  was  months  before  I  could  accept  that 
boy  as  a  fact  f  If,  at  any  moment,  he  had  vanished 
from  my  sight,  crib  and  all,  I  should  not  have  been 
surprised.  I  was  not  sure  of  him  until  he  began  to 
show  his  mother's  eyes. 

Yes,  even  in  those  days  some  of  the  old  leaven 
worked  in  me.  I  had  moments  of  that  old  barbaric 
freedom  which  we  used  to  rejoice  in  —  that  feeling  of 
being  answerable  to  nothing  in  the  world  save  my  own 
will  —  the  sense  of  untrammeled,  careless  power. 


174          -4  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH. 

Do  you  remember  the  night  that  we  walked  till  sun- 
rise? You  remember  how  hot  it  was  at  midnight, 
when  we  left  the  office,  arfd  how  the  moonlight  on  the 
statue  above  the  City  Hall  seemed  to  invite  us  field- 
ward,  where  no  gaslight  glared,  no  torches  flickered. 
So  we  walked  idly  northward,  through  the  black, 
silence-stricken  down-town  streets ;  through  that  fever, 
ish,  unresting  central  region  that  lies  between  the  vile- 
ness  of  Houston  Street  and  the  calm  and  spacious 
dignity  of  the  brown-stone  ways,  where  the  closed  and 
darkened  dwellings  looked  like  huge  tombs  in  the  pallid 
light  of  the  moon.  We  passed  the  suburban  belt  of 
shanties ;  we  passed  the  garden-girt  villas  beyond  them, 
and  it  was  from  the  hill  above  Spuyten  Duyvil  that  we 
saw  the  first  color  of  the  morning  upon  the  face  of  the 
Palisades. 

It  would  have  taken  very  little  in  that  moment  to  set 
us  off  to  tramping  the  broad  earth,  for  the  pure  joy 
of  free  wayfaring.  What  was  there  to  hold  us  back  ? 
No  tie  of  home  or  kin.  All  we  had  in  the  world  to 
leave  behind  us  was  some  futile  scribbling  on  various 
sheets  of  paper.  And  of  that  sort  of  thing  both  our 
heads  were  full  enough.  I  think  it  was  but  the  veriest 
chance  that,  having  begun  that  walk,  we  did  not  go  on 
and  get  our  fill  of  wandering,  and  ruin  our  lives. 
•  Well,  that  same  wild,  adventurous  spirit  came  upon 
me  now  and  then.  There  were  times  when,  for  the 
moment,  I  forgot  that  I  had  a  wife  and  a  child.  There 
were  times  when  I  remembered  them  as  a  burden. 
Why  should  I  not  say  this  ?  It  is  the  history  of  every 


A  LETTER  AND  A   PARAGRAPH.  175 

married  man,  —  at  least  of  every  manly  man,  —  though 
he  be  married  to  the  best  woman  in  the  world.  It  means 
no  lack  of  love.  It  is  as  unavoidable  as  the  leap  of  the 
blood  in  you  that  answers  a  trumpet-call. 

At  first  I  was  frightened,  and  fought  against  it  as 
against  something  that  might  grow  upon  me.  I  re- 
proached myself  for  disloyalty  in  thought.  Ah  !  what 
need  had  1  to  fight  ?  What  need  had  I  to  choke  down 
rebellious  fancies,  while  my  wife's  love  was  working 
that  miracle  that  makes  two  spirits  one. 

What  is  it,  this  union  that  comes  to  us  as  a  surprise, 
and  remains  for  all  outside  an  incommunicable  mystery  ? 
What  is  this  that  makes  our  unmarried  love  seem  so 
slight  and  childish  a  thing  ?  You  and  I,  who  know  it, 
know  that  it  is  no  mere  fruit  of  intimacy  and  usage, 
although  in  its  growth  it  keeps  pace  with  these.  We 
know  that  in  some  subtle  way  it  has  been  given  to  a 
man  to  see  a  woman's  soul  as  he  sees  his  own,  and  to  a 
woman  to  look  into  a  man's  heart  as  if  it  were,  indeed, 
hers.  But  the  friend  who  sits  at  my  table,  seeing  that 
my  wife  and  I  understand  each  other  at  a  simple  meet- 
ing of  the  eyes,  make  no  more  of  it  than  he  does  of  the 
glance  of  intelligence  which,  with  close  friends,  often 
takes  the  place  of  speech.  He  never  dreams  of  the 
sweet  delight  wTith  which  we  commune  together  in  a 
language  that  he  cannot  understand  —  that  he  cannot 
hear  —  a  language  that  has  no  formulated  words,  feel- 
ing answering  feeling. 

It  is  not  wonderful  that  I  should  wish  to  give  ex- 
pression to  the  gratitude  with  which  I  have  seen  my 


176  ^  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH. 

life  made  to  blossom  thus;  my  thankfulness  for  the 
love  which  has  made  me  not  only  a  happier,  but,  I 
humbly  believe,  a  wiser  and  a  better-minded  man. 
But  I  know  too  well  the  hopelessness  of  trying  to  find 
words  to  describe  what,  were  I  a  poet,  my  best  song 
might  but  faintly,  faintly  echo. 

I  thought  I  heard  a  rustle  behind  me  just  now.  In 
a  little  while  my  wife  will  come  softly  into  the  room, 
and  softly  up  to  where  I  am  sitting,  stepping  silently 
across  your  bearskin  rug,  and  will  lay  one  hand  softly 
on  my  left  shoulder,  while  the  other  slips  down  this 
arm  with  which  I  write,  until  it  falls  and  closes  lightly, 
yet  with  loving  firmness,  on  my  hand  that  holds  the 
pen.  And  I  shall  say,  "  Only  the  last  words  to  Will 
and  his  wife,  dear."  And  she  will  release  my  hand, 
and  will  lift  her  own,  I  think,  to  caress  the  patch  of 
gray  hair  on  my  temple ;  it  is  a  way  she  has,  as  though 
it  were  some  pitiful  scar,  and  she  will  say,  "  Give  them 
my  love,  and  tell  them  they  must  not  fail  us  this 
Christmas.  I  want  them  to  see  how  our  Willy  has 
grown."  And  when  she  says  "  Our  Willy,"  the  hand 
on  my  shoulder  will  instinctively  close  a  little,  cling- 
ingly ;  and  she  will  bend  her  head,  and  put  her  face 
close  to  mine,  and  I  shall  turn  to  look  into  her  eyes. 
****** 

Bear  with  me,  my  dear  Will,  until  I  have  told  you 
why  I  have  written  this  letter  and  what  it  means.  1 
have  concealed  one  thing  from  you  for  the  last  six 
months.  I  have  disease  of  the  heart,  and  the  doctor 
has  told  me  that  I  may  die  at  any  moment.  Somehow, 


A  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH.  177 

I  think  —  I  know  the  moment  is  close  at  hand ;  I  shall 
soon  go  to  that  narrow  cot  on  the  right  of  the  door, 
and  I  do  not  believe  I  shall  wake  up  in  the  morning 
with  the  sun  in  my  eyes,  to  look  across  the  room  and 
see  that  its  companion  is  gone. 

For  I  am  in  the  old  room,  Will,  as  you  know,  and  it 
is  not  ten  years  since  you  went  away,  but  two  days. 
The  picture  that  has  seemed  real  to  me  as  I  wrote  these 
pages  is  fading,  and  the  thin  gas-jet  flickers  and  sinks 
as  it  always  did  in  these  first  morning  hours.  I  can 
hear  the  roar  of  the  last  Harlem  train  swell  and  sink, 
and  the  sharp  clink  of  car-bells  break  the  silence  that 
follows.  The  wind  is  gasping  and  struggling  in  the 
chimney,  and  blowing  a  white  powdery  ash  down  on 
the  hearth.  I  have  just  burnt  my  poems  and  the  play. 
Both  the  table  drawers  are  empty  now;  and  soon 
enough  the  two  empty  chairs  will  stare  at  each  other 
across  the  bare  table.  What  a  wild  dream  have  I 
dreamt  in  all  this  emptiness!  Just  now,  I  thought 
indeed  that  it  was  true.  I  thought  I  heard  a  woman's 
step  behind  me,  and  I  turned  — 

Peace  be  with  you,  Will,  in  the  fullness  of  your 
love.  I  am  going  to  sleep.  Perhaps  I  shall  dream 
it  all  again,  and  shall  hear  that  soft  footfall  when  the 
turn  of  the  night  comes,  and  the  pale  light  through 
the  ragged  blind, -and  the  end  of  a  long  loneliness. 

After  I  am  dead,  I  wish  you  to  think  of  me  not  as  I 
was,  but  as  I  wanted  to  be.  I  have  tried  to  show  you 
that  I  have  led  by  your  side  a  happier  and  dearer  life 
of  hope  and  aspiration  than  the  one  you  saw.  I  have 


178  A  LETTER  AND  A  PARAGRAPH. 

tried  to  leave  your  memory  a  picture  of  me  that  you  will 
not  shrink  from  calling  up  when  you  have  a  quiet  hour 
and  time  for  thought  of  the  friend  whom  you  knew 
well ;  but  whom  you  may,  perhaps,  know  better  now 

that  he  is  dead. 

REGINALD  BABCLAY. 


n. 

THE  PARAGRAPH. 
[From  the  New  York  Herald  of  Nov.  18,  1883.] 

Reginald  Barclay,  a  journalist,  was  found  dead  in  his 
bed  at  15  St.  Mark's  Place,  yesterday  morning.  No 
inquest  was  held,  as  Mr.  Barclay  had  been  known  to  be 
suffering  from  disease  of  the  heart,  and  his  death  was- 
not  unexpected.  The  deceased  came  originally  from 
Oneida  County,  and  was  regarded  as  a  young  journal- 
ist of  considerable  promise.  He  had  been  for  some 
years  on  the  city  staff  of  the  Record^  and  was  the 
correspondent  of  several  out-of-town  papers.  He  had 
also  contributed  to  the  monthly  magazines,  occasional 
poems  and  short  stories,  which  showed  the  possession, 
in  some  measure,  of  the  imaginative  faculty.  Mr.  Bar- 
clay was  about  thirty  years  of  age,  and  unmarried. 


PLAYING   A   PART: 

A  COMEDY  FOR  AMATEUR  ACTING. 
BY  BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 


The  Scene  is  a  handsomely-furnished  parlor,  with  a  general  air  of 
home  comfort.  A  curtained  window  on  each  side  of  the  central 
fireplace  would  light  the  room  if  it  were  not  evening ,  as  the  lamp 
on  the  work-table  in  the  centre  of  the  room  informs  us.  At  one 
side  of  the  work-table  is  the  wife,  winding  a  ball  of  w or s ted  from 
a  skein  which  her  husband  holds  in  his  hands. 

HE  (looking  at  icatch,  aside).  This  wool  takes  as 
long  to  wind  up  as  a  bankrupt  estate.  (Fidgets.) 

She.  Do  keep  still,  Jack!  Stop  fidgeting  and 
jumping  around. 

He.  When  you  pull  the  string,  Jenny,  I  am  always 
a  jumping-jack  to  dance  attendance  on  you. 

She  (seriously).  Very  pretty,  indeed!  It  was  true 
too  —  once  —  before  we  were  married  :  now  you  lead 
me  a  different  dance. 

He.     I  am  your  partner  still. 

She  (sadly).  But  the  figure  is  always  the  Ladies' 
Chain. 

He  (aside).  If  I  don't  get  away  soon  I  sha'n't  be 
able  to  do  any  work  to-night.  —  (Aloud).  .What  do 
you  mean  by  that  solemn  tone  ? 

She.     Oh,  nothing  —  nothing  of  any  consequence. 

179 


180  PLATING  A  PART. 

He  (aside).  We  look  like  two  fools  acting  in  private 
theatricals. 

She  (finishing  ball  of  worsted).  That  will  do : 
thank  you.  Do  not  let  me  detain  you :  I  know  you 
are  in  a  hurry. 

He.    I  have  my  work  to  do. 

She.  So  it  seems ;  and  it  takes  all  day  and  half  the 
night. 

•    He  (rising  and  going  to  fireplace).    I  am  working 
hard  for  our  future  happiness. 

She  (quietly).  I  should  like  a  little  of  the  happiness 
now. 

He  (standing  with  back  to  fireplace).  Are  you  un- 
happy ? 

She.     Oh  no  —  not  very. 

He.     Do  you  not  have  everything  you  wish  ? 

She.     Oh  yes  —  except  the  one  thing  I  want  most. 

He.  Well,  my  dear,  I  am  at  home  as  much  as  I  can 
be. 

She.     So  you  think  I  meant  you  ? 

He  (embarrassed).     Well — I  did  suppose  —  that  — 

She.  Yes,  I  used  to  want  you.  The  days  were 
long  enough  while  you  were  away,  and  I  waited  for 
your  return.  Now  I  have  been  alone  so  much  that  I 
am  getting  accustomed  to  solitude.  And  I  do  not 
really  know  what  it  is  I  do  want.  I  am  listless,  ner- 
vous, good-for-nothing  — 

He  (gallantly).    You  are  good  enough  for  me. 

She.  You  did  think  so  once;  and  perhaps  you 
would  think  so  again  —  if  you  could  spare  the  tune 
to  get  acquainted  with  me. 


PLATING  A  PART.  181 

He  (surprised).     Jenny,  are  you  ill? 

She.  Not  more  so  than  usual.  I  was  bright  enough 
two  years  ago,  when  we  were  married.  But  for  two 
years  -I  have  not  lived,  I  have  vegetated ;  more  like  a 
plant  than  a  human  being;  and  even  plants  require 
some  sunshine. 

He  (aside).  I  have  never  heard  her  talk  like  this 
before.  I  don't  understand  it.  —  (Aloud.)  Why, 
Jenny,  you  speak  as  if  I  were  a  cloud  over  your 
life. 

She.    Do  I  ?    Well,  it  does  not  matter. 

He.     I  try  to  be  a  good  husband,  don't  I  ? 

She  (indifferently).  As  well  as  you  know  how,  I 
suppose. 

He.     Do  I  deprive  you  of  anything  you  want  ? 

She  (impatiently).     Of  course  you  do  not. 

He.  I  work  hard,  I  know,  but  when  I  go  out  in  the 
evening  now  and  then  — 

She  (aside).     Six  nights  every  week.     (Sighing.) 

He.  I  really  work.  There  are  husbands  who  say 
they  are  at  work  when  they  are  at  the  club  playing 
poker :  now  I  am  really  working. 

She  (impatiently).  You  have  no  small  vices.  (His- 
ing.)  Is  there  no  work  calling  you  away  to-night? 
Why  are  you  not  off? 

He  (looking  at  watch).  I  am  a  little  late,  that's  a 
fact :  still,  I  can  do  what  I  have  to  do  if  I  work  like  a 
horse. 

She.  Have  you  to  draw  a  conveyance  ?  That  is  the 
old  joke. 

He.    This  is  no  joke.     It 's  a  divorce  suit. 


182  PLATING  A  PART. 

She  (quickly).     Is  it  that  Lightfoot  person  again? 

He.  It  is  Mrs.  Liglitfoot's  case.  She  is  a  very  fine 
woman,  and  her  husband  has  treated  her  shamefully. 

She.  Better  than  the  creature  deserved,  I  dare  say. 
You  will  win  her  case  for  her? 

He.    I  shall  do  my  best. 

She  (sarcastically).  No  doubt.  —  (Aside.)  I  hate 
that  woman !  (  Crosses  the  room  and  sits  on  sofa  on 
the  right  of  the  fireplace.) 

He.  But  the  result  of  a  lawsuit  is  generally  a  toss- 
up  ;  and  heads  do  not  always  win. 

She.  I  wish  you  luck  this  time  —  for  her  husband's 
sake :  he  '11  be  glad  to  be  rid  of  her.  But  I  doubt  it : 
you  can't  get  up  any  sympathy  by  exhibiting  her  to 
the  jury  :  she  is  n't  good-looking  enough. 

He  (quickly).     She 's  a  very  fine  woman  indeed. 

She  (aside).  How  eagerly  he  defends  her!  — 
(Aloud.)  She 's  a  great  big,  tall,  giantess  creature, 
with  a  face  like  a  wax  doll  and  a  head  of  hair  like  a 
Circassian  Girl.  No  juryman  will  fall  in  love  with 
her. 

He.  How  often  have  I  told  you  that  Justice  does 
not  consider  persons  !  Now,  in  the  eye  of  the  law  — 

She  (interrupting).  Do  you  acknowledge  that  the 
law  has  but  one  eye  and  can  see  only  one  side? 

He.  Are  you  jealous?  (Crossing  and  standing  in 
front  of  her.) 

She.  Jealous  of  this  Mrs.  Lightfoot?  (Laughs.) 
Ridiculous ! 

He.  I  am  glad  of  it,  for  I  think  a  jealous  woman 
has  a  very  poor  opinion  of  herself. 


PLAYING  A   PART.  183 

She  (forcibly}.  And  it  is  her  business  which  takes 
you  out  to-night  ? 

He  (going  toward  the  left-hand  door).  I  have  to  go 
across  to  the  Bar  Association  to  look  up  some  points, 
and  — 

She  (rising  quickly).  And  you  can  just  send  me  a 
cab.  I  shall  go  to  Mrs.  Playfair's  to  rehearse  again 
for  the  private  theatricals. 

He  (annoyed,  coming  back).  But  I  had  asked  you 
to  give  it  up. 

She  (with  growing  excitement).  And  I  had  almost 
determined  to  give  it  up,  but  I  have  changed  my  mind. 
That's  a  woman's  privilege,  isn't  it?  I  am  tired  of 
spending  my  evenings  by  myself. 

He.    Now  be  reasonable,  Jenny  :  I  must  work. 

She.    And  I  must  play  — -  in  the  private  theatricals. 

He.    But  I  don't  like  private  theatricals. 

She.     Don't  you  ?    I  do. 

He.    And  I  particularly  dislike  amateur  actors. 

She.  Do  you  ?  I  don't.  I  like  some  of  them  very 
much  ;  and  some  of  them  liks  me,  too. 

He.     The  deuce  they  do  ! 

She.  Tom  Thursby  and  Dick  Carey  and  Harry 
Wylde  were  all  disputing  who  should  make  love  to 
me. 

He.    Make  love  to  you  ? 

She.     In  the  play  —  in  Husbands  and  Wives;, 

He.  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  you  are  going  to  act 
on  the  stage  with  those  brainless  idiots  ? 

She  (interrupting).  L>o  not  call  my  frienda  names : 
it  is  in  bad  taste. 


184  PLAYING  A   PART. 

He.  What  will  people  say  when  they  see  my  wife 
pawed  and  clawed  by  those  fellows? 

She.  Let  them  say  what  they  please.  Do  you  think 
I  care  for  the  tittle-tattle  of  the  riffraff  of  society  ? 

He.  But,  Jenny —  (Brusquely.)  Confound  it! 
I  have  no  patience  with  you ! 

She.  So  I  have  discovered.  But  you  need  not  lose 
your  temper  here,  and  swear.  Go  outside  and  do  it, 
and  leave  me  alone,  as  I  am  every  evening. 

He.    You  talk  as  if  I  ill-treated  you. 

She  (sarcastically.)  Do  I  ?  That  is  very  wicked  of 
me,  isn't  it?  You  take  the  best  possible  care  of  me, 
you  are  ever  thinking  of  me,  and  you  never  leave  my 
side  for  a  moment.  Oh  no,  you  do  not  ill-treat  me  — 
or  abuse  me  —  or  neglect  me  (breaking  down)  —  or 
make  me  miserable.  There  is  nothing  the  matter  with 
me,  of  course.  But  you  never  will  believe  I  have  a 
heart  until  you  have  broken  it !  (Sinking  on  chair,  C.) 

He  (crossing  to  her).  You  are  excited,  I  see;  still, 
I  must  say  this  is  a  little  too  much. 

She  (starting  up).  Don't  come  near  me!  (Sarcas- 
tically.) Don't  let  me  keep  you  from  your  work  (going 
to  door  Jt.  2d  E),  and  don't  fail  to  send  me  a  cab.  At 
last  I  revolt  against  your  neglect. 

He  (indignantly protesting).  My  neglect?  Do  you 
mean  to  say  I  neglect  you  ?  My  conscience  does  not 
reproach  me, 

She  (at  the  door  on  the  right).  That 's  because  you 
haven't  any!  (Exit,  slamming  door). 

He  (alone).  I  never  saw  her  go  on  that  way  before. 
What  can  be  the  matter  with  her?  She  is  not  like 


PLATING  A  PART.  185 

herself  at  all :  she  is  low-spirited  and  nervous.  Now, 
I  never  could  see  why  women  had  any  nerves.  I  won- 
der if  she  really  thinks  that  I  neglect  her  ?  I  should 
be  sorry,  very  sorry,  if  she  did.  I  '11  not  go  out  to-night : 
I  '11  stay  at  home  and  have  a  quiet  evening  at  my  own 
fireside.  ($its  in  chair  in  the  centre).  I  think  that 
will  bring  her  round.  I  'd  like  to  know  what  has  made 
her  act  like  this.  Has  she  been  reading  any  sentimental 
trash,  I  wonder?  (Sees  book  in  work-basket.)  Now, 
here 's  some  yellow-covered  literature.  (  Takes  it  up.) 
Why,  it 's  that  confounded  play,  Husbands  and  Wives. 
Let  me  see  the  silly  stuff.  (Reads :)  "  My  darling,  one 
more  embrace,  one  last,  long,  loving  kiss ; "  and  then 
he  hugs  her  and  kisses  her.  (Rising.)  And  she 
thinks  I  '11  have  her  play  a  part  like  that?  How  should 
I  look  while  that  was  going  on?  Can't  she  find  some- 
thing else  ?  (At  work-table.)  Here  is  another.  (  Takes 
up  second  pamphlet.)  No,  it  is  a  Guide  to  the  Pas- 
sions. I  fear  I  need  no  guide  to  get  into  a  passion.  I 
doubt  if  there 's  as  much  hugging  and  kissing  in  this  as 
in  the  other  one.  (Reads :)  "  It  is  impossible  to  de- 
scribe all  the  effects  of  the  various  passions,  but  a  few 
hints  are  here  given  as  to  how  the  more  important  may 
be  delineated."  (Spoken*)  This  is  interesting.  If 
ever  I  have  to  delineate  a  passion  I  shall  fall  back  on 
this  guide.  (Reads :)  "  Love  is  a  — "  (Reads  hastily 
and  unintelligibly :)  "  When  successful,  love  author- 
izes the  fervent  embrace  of  the  beloved ! "  The  deuce 
it  does !  And  I  find  my  wife  getting  instruction  from 
this  Devil's  text-book !  A  little  more  and  I  should  be 
jealous.  (Looks  at  book.)  Ah,  here  is  jealousy:  now 


186  PLAYING  A  PART. 

let 's  see  how  I  ought  to  feel.  (Reads :)  "  Jealousy  is 
a  mixture  of  passions  and — "  (Reads  hastily  and 
unintelligibly.)  Not  so  bad !  I  believe  I  could  act  up 
to  these  instructions.  (Jumping  up.)  And  I  will! 
My  wife  wants  acting :  she  shall  have  it !  She  com- 
plains of  monotony:  she  shall  have  variety!  "Jeal- 
ousy is  a  mixture  of  passions."  I  '11  be  jealous :  I  '11  give 
her  a  mixture  of  passions.  I  '11  take  a  leaf  out  of  her 
book,  and  I  '11  find  a  cure  for  these  nerves  of  her's.  I  '11 
learn  my  part  at  once :  we  '11  have  some  private  the- 
atricals to  order.  (Walks  up  and  down,  studying 
book.) 

She  re-enters,  with  bonnet  on  and  cloak  over  her  arm,  and  stands  in 
surprise,  watching  him. 

She.    You  here  still? 

He.    Yes. 

She.    Have  you  ordered  a  cab  for  me  ? 

He.    No. 

She.    And  why  not  ? 

He  (aside).  Now's  my  chance.  Mixture  of  pas- 
sions—  I'll  try  suspicion  first.  —  (Aloud.)  Because  I 
do  not  approve  of  the  people  you  are  going  to  meet  — 
these  Thursbys  and  Careys  and  Wyldes. 

She  (calmly  sitting  on  sofa).  Perhaps  you  would 
like  to  revise  my  visiting-list,  and  tell  the  servant  whom 
I  am  to  receive. 

He.    You  may  see  what  ladies  you  please  — 

She  (interrupting).  Thank  you ;  still,  I  do  not  please 
to  see  Mrs.  Lightfoot. 

He  (annoyed).     I  say  nothing  of  her. 


PLAYING  A  PART.  187 

She.  Oh  dear,  no !  I  dare  say  you  keep  it  as  secret 
as  you  can. 

He  (aside).  Simple  suspicion  is  useless.  What's 
next?  (Glances  in  pamphlet:)  "Peevish  personali- 
ties." I  will  pass  on  to  peevish  personalities.  —  (Aloud.) 
Now,  these  men,  these  fellows  who  strut  about  the 
stage  for  an  idle  hour,  who  are  they?  This  Tom 
Thursby,  who  wanted  to  make  love  to  you  —  who 
is  he? 

She.  Are  you  going  to  ask  many  questions?  Is 
this  catechism  a  long  one  ?  If  it  is,  I  may  as  well  lay 
aside  my  shawl. 

He.     Who  is  he,  I  say,  I  insist  upon  knowing. 

She.    He 's  a  good  enough  fellow  in  his  way. 

He  (sternly).  He  had  best  beware  how  he  gets  in 
my  way. 

She  (aside).  There 's  a  great  change  in  his  manner: 
I  do  not  understand  it. 

He.  And  this  Dick  Carey  —  who  is  he  ?  (Stalking 
toward  her.) 

She  (starting  up  and  crossing).  Are  you  trying  to 
frighten  me  by  this  violence? 

He  (aside).     It  is  producing  an  effect. 

She.  But  I  am  not  afraid  of  you,  if  I  am  a  weak 
woman  and  you  are  a  strong  man. 

He  (aside).  It  is  going  all  right.  —  (Aloud,  fiercely.) 
Answer  me  at  once !  Is  this  Carey  married  ? 

She.    I  believe  he  is. 

He.  You  believe!  Don't  you  know?  Does  his 
wife  act  with  these  strollers?  Have  you  not  seen 
her? 


188  PLATING  A  PAET. 

She.  I  have  never  seen  her.  She  and  her  husband 
are  like  the  two  buckets  in  a  well :  they  never  turn  up 
together.  They  meet  only  to  clash,  and  one  is  always 
throwing  cold  water  on  the  other. 

He.     And  Harry  Wylde !     Is  he  married  ? 

She.  Yes ;  and  his  wife  is  always  keeping  him  in 
hot  water. 

He.     And  so  he  comes  to  you  for  consolation  ? 

She  (laughing}.  He  needs  no  consoling:  he  has 
always  such  a  flow  of  spirits. 

He.     I  Ve  heard  the  fellow  drank. 

She  (surprised^  aside).  Can  Jack  be  jealous?  I 
wish  I  could  think  so,  for  then  I  might  hope  he  still 
loved  me. 

He.  And  do  you  suppose  I  can  allow  you  to  asso- 
ciate with  these  fellows,  who  all  want  to  make  love 
to  you? 

She  (aside,  joyfully).  He  is  jealous!  The  dear 
boy! 

He  (fiercely).  Do  you  think  I  can  permit  this, 
madam  ? 

She  (aside).  "Madam !  "  I  could  hug  him  for  lov- 
ing me  enough  to  call  me  "  madam  "  like  that.  But  I 
must  not  give  in  too  soon. 

He.  Have  you  nothing  to  say  for  yourself?  Can 
you  find  no  words  to  defend  yourself,  woman  ? 

She  (aside).  "  Woman ! "  He  calls  me  "  woman ! " 
I  can  forgive  him  anything  now. 

He.  Are  you  dumb,  woman  ?  Have  you  naught  to 
say? 

She  (gleefully ,  aside).     I  had  no  idea  I  had  married 


PLATING  A  PART.  189 

an  Othello !  (She  sees  the  pillow  on  the  sofa,  and, 
crossing  to  it  quietly,  hides  the  pillow  behind  the  sofa.) 

He  (aside).  What  did  she  mean  by  that  ?  —  (Alvud, 
fiercely?)  Do  you  intend  to  deny  — 

She  (interrupting).  I  have  nothing  to  deny,  I  have 
nothing  to  conceal. 

He.  Do  you  deny  that  you  confessed  these  fellows 
sought  to  make  love  to  you  ? 

She.  I  do  not  deny  that.  (Mischievously.)  But 
I  never  thought  you  would  worry  about  such  trifles. 

He.  Trifles!  madam?  Trifles,  indeed!  (Glances 
in  book,  and  quoting :) 

"  Trifles  light  as  air 
Are  to  the  jealous  confirmations  strong 
As  proofs  of  holy  writ." 

She  (surprised  aside).  Where  did  he  get  his  blank 
verse  ? 

He  (aside).  That  seemed  to  tell.  I'll  give  her 
some  more.  (  Glancing  in  pamphlet,  and  quoting :) 

"But,  alas,  to  make  me 
A  fixed  figure  for  the  time  of  scorn 
To  point  his  slow,  unmoving  finger  at!" 

She  (aside,  jumping  up  with  indignation).  Why,  it 
is  Othello  he  is  quoting!  He  is  acting!  He  is  posi- 
tively playing  a  part !  It  is  shameful  of  him !  It  's 
not  real  jealousy :  it 's  a  sham.  Oh,  the  wretch !  But 
I  '11  pay  him  back !  I  '11  make  him  jealous  without  any 
make-believe. 

He  (aside).  I  'm  getting  on  capitally.  I  'm  making 
a  strong  impression :  I  am  rousing  her  out  of  her  ner- 


190  PLAYING  A  PART. 

vousness.  I  doubt  if  she  will  want  any  more  private 
theatricals  now.  I  don't  think  I  shall  have  to  repeat 
the  lesson.  This  Guide  to  the  Passions  is  a  first-rate 
book :  I  '11  keep  one  in  the  house  all  the  time. 

She  (aside).  If  he  plays  Othello,  I  can  play  lago. 
I  '11  give  his  jealousy  something  to  feed  on.  I  have  no 
blank  verse  for  him,  but  I  '11  make  him  blank  enough 
before  I  am  done  with  him.  Oh,  the  villain! 

He  (aside).  Now  let  me  try  threatening.  (Glanc- 
ing in  book  :)  "  Pity  the  sorrows  of  a  poor  old  man  " 

—  I  've  got  the  wrong  place.     That 's  not  threatening 

—  that's   senility.     (Turning  over  page.)     Ah,  here 
it  is. 

She  (aside).  And  he  thinks  he  can  jest  with  a 
woman's  heart  and  not  be  punished  ?  Oh,  the  wicked- 
ness of  man  !  —  (Forcibly).  Oh,  if  mamma  were  only 
here,  now ! 

He  (threateningly).  Who  are  these  fellows?  This 
Tom,  Dick  and  Harry  are  —  are  they  —  (hesitates,  and 
glances  i?i pamphlet)  are  they  "framed  to  make  women 
false?" 

She  (aside).  Why,  he's  got  a  book!  It's  my 
Guide  to  the  Passions.  The  wretch  has  actually  been 
copying  his  jealousy  out  of  my  own  book.  (Aloud, 
with  pretended  emotion).  Dear  me,  Jack,  you  never 
before  objected  to  my  little  flirtations.  (Aside,  icatch- 
ing  him).  How  will  he  like  that  ? 

He  (aside,  puzzled).  "Little  flirtations!"  I  don't 
like  that  —  I  don't  like  it  at  all. 

She.     They  have  all  been  attentive,  of  course  — 

He  (aside).     "  Of  course ! "  I  don't  like  that,  either. 


PLAYING  A   PAET. 

She.  But  I  did  not  think  you  would  so  take  to 
heart  a  few  innocent  endearments. 

He  (starting).  "Innocent  endearments!"  Do  you 
mean  to  say  that  they  offer  you  any  "  innocent  endear- 
ments ?  " 

She  (quietly).  Don't  be  so  boisterous,  Jack:  you 
will  crush  my  book. 

He  (looking  at  pamphlet  crushed  in  his  hand,  and 
throwing  it  from  him,  aside).  Confound  the  book !  I 
do  not  need  any  prompting  now.  —  (Aloud.)  Which 
of  these  men  has  dared  to  offer  you  any  "innocent 
endearments  ?  " 

She  (hesitatingly).  Well  —  I  don't  know  —  that  I 
ought  to  tell  you  —  since  you  take  things  so  queerly. 
But  Tom  — 

He  (forcibly).     Tom? 

She.  Mr.  Thursby,  I  mean.  He  and  I  are  very  old 
friends,  you  know  —  I  believe  we  are  third  cousins  or 
so  —  and  of  course  I  don't  stand  on  ceremony  with 
him. 

He.  And  he  does  not  stand  on  ceremony  with  you, 
I  suppose  ? 

She.  Oh,  no.  In  fact,  we  are  first-rate  friends. 
Indeed,  when  Dick  Carey  wanted  to  make  love  to  me, 
he  was  quite  jealous. 

He.  Oh,  he  was  jealous,  was  he  ?  The  fellow's  im- 
pudence is  amazing !  When  I  meet  him  I  '11  give  him 
a  piece  of  my  mind. 

She  (demurely).     Are  you  sure  you  can  spare  it ! 

He.  Don't  irritate  me  too  far,  Jenny :  I  've  a  temper 
of  my  own. 


192  PLAYING  A  PAET. 

She.     You  seem  to  have  lost  it  now. 

He.  Do  you  not  see  that  I  am  in  a  heat  about  this 
thing?  How  can  you  sit  there  so  calmly?  You  keep 
cool  like  a —  (hesitates)  like  a  — 

She  (interrupting).  Like  a  burning-glass,  I  keep 
cool  myself  while  setting  you  on  fire  ?  Exactly  so,  and 
I  suppose  you  would  prefer  me  to  be  a  looking-glass  in 
which  you  could  see  only  yourself? 

He.  A  wife  should  reflect  her  husband's  image,  and 
not  that  of  a  pack  of  fools. 

She.     Come,  come,  Jack,  you  are  not  jealous? 

He.  "  Jealous ! "  Of  course  I  am  not  jealous,  but 
I  am  very  much  annoyed. 

She.  I  am  glad  that  you  are  not  jealous,  for  I  have 
always  heard  that  a  jealous  man  has  a  very  poor  opinion 
of  himself.  —  (Aside.)  There  's  one  for  him. 

He.  I  am  not  jealous,  but  I  will  probe  this  thing  to 
the  bottom ;  I  must  know  the  truth. 

She  (aside).  He  is  jealous  now ;  and  this  is  real:  I 
am  sure  it  is. 

He.  Go  on,  tell  me  more  :  I  must  get  at  the  bottom 
facts.  There 's  nothing  like  truth. 

She  (aside).  There  is  nothing  like  it  in  what  he 's 
learning. 

He  (aside).  This  Carey  is  harmless  enough,  and  he 
can't  help  talking.  He  's  a  —  he 's  a  telescope  ;  you 
have  only  to  draw  him  out,  and  anybody  can  see 
through  him.  I  '11  get  hold  of  him,  draw  him  out,  and 
then  shut  him  up  !  (  Crossing  excitedly.) 

She  (aside).  How  much  more  his  real  jealousy 
moves  me  than  his  pretence  of  it!  He  seems  very 


PLATING  A  PAET.  193 

much  affected  :  no  man  could  be  as  jealous  as  he  is 
unless  he  was  very  much  in  love. 

He  (with  affected  coolness).  You  have  told  me 
about  Tom  and  Dick ;  pray,  have  you  nothing  to  say 
about  Harry  ? 

She.  Mr.  Wylde  ?  (Enthusiastically.)  He  is  a 
man  after  my  own  heart ! 

He.  So  he  is  after  it?  (Savagely.)  Just  let  me 
get  after  him  ! 

She  (coolly).  Well,  if  you  do  not  like  his  attentions, 
you  can  take  him  apart  and  tell  him  so. 

He  (vindictively).  If  I  took  him  apart  he'd  never 
get  put  together  again ! 

She.  Mr.  Wylde  is  very  much  afraid  of  his  wife, 
but  when  she  is  not  there  he  is  more  devoted  than 
either  of  the  others. 

He.  "  More  devoted ! "  What  else  shall  I  hear, 
I  wonder  ? 

She.    It  was  he  who  had  to  kiss  me. 

He  (startled).     What? 

She.  I  told  him  not  to  do  it.  I  knew  I  should 
blush  if  he  kissed  me :  1  always  do. 

He  (in  great  agitation).  You  always  do?  Has  this 
man  ever —  (Breaking  down.)  Oh,  Jenny!  Jenny! 
you  do  not  know  what  you  are  doing.  I  do  not  blame 
you  —  it  is  not  your  fault :  it  is  mine.  I  did  not  know 
how  much  I  loved  you,  and  I  find  it  out  now,  when  it 
is  perhaps  too  late. 

She  (aside).  How  I  have  longed  for  a  few  words 
of  love  like  these  !  and  they  have  come  at  last ! 

He.     I  have  been  too  selfish  ;    I  have  thought  too 


194  PLATING  A  PART. 

much  of  my  work  and  too  little  of  your  happiness.  I 
see  now  what  a  mistake  1  have  made. 

She  (aside).  I  cannot  sit  still  here  and  see  him 
waste  his  love  in  the  air  like  this. 

He.  I  shall  turn  over  a  new  leaf.  If  you  will  let 
me  I  shall  devote  myself  to  you,  taking  care  of  you  and 
making  you  happy. 

She  (aside).     If  he  had  only  spoken  like  that  before ! 

He.  1  will  try  to  win  you  away  from  these  associates : 
I  am  sure  that  in  your  heart  you  do  not  care  for  them. 
(  Crossing  to  her.)  You  know  that  I  love  you :  can  I  not 
hope  to  win  you  back  to  me  ? 

She  (aside).  Once  before  he  spoke  to  me  of  his 
love:  I  can  remember  every  tone  of  his  voice,  every 
word  he  said. 

He.    Jenny,  is  my  task  hopeless  ? 

She  (quietly  crossing  to  arm-chair).  The  task  is 
easy,  Jack.  (Smiling.)  Perhaps  you  think  too  much 
of  these  associates:  perhaps  you  think  a  good  deal 
more  of  them  than.  I  do.  In  fact,  I  am  sure  that  to- 
night you  were  the  one  who  took  to  private  theatricals 
first.  By  the  way,  where 's  my  Guide  to  the  Passions? 
Have  you  seen  it  lately  ? 

He  (half  comprehending).  Your  Guide  to  the  Pas- 
sions f  A  book  with  a  yellow  cover  ?  I  think  I  have 
seen  it. 

She.  I  saw  it  last  in  your  hand  —  just  after  you 
had  been  quoting  Othello. 

He.     Othello?     Oh,  then  you  know  — 

She  (smiling).  Yes,  I  know.  I  saw,  I  understood, 
and  I  retaliated  on  the  spot. 


PLAYING  A  PART.  195 

He.    You  retaliated  ? 

She.  I  paid  you  off  in  your  own  coin  —  counterfeit, 
like  yours. 

He  (joyfully).    Then  Tom  did  not  make  love  to  you ? 

She.     Oh,  yes  he  did  —  in  the  play. 

He.     And  Dick  is  not  devoted? 

She.     Yes,  he  is  —  in  the  play. 

He.     And  Harry  did  not  try  to  kiss  you  ? 

She.     Indeed  he  did  —  in  the  play. 

He.     Then  you  have  been  playing  a  part  ? 

She.     Have  n't  you  ? 

He.  Have  n't  I?  Certainly  not.  At  least —  Well, 
at  least  I  will  say  nothing  more  about  Tom  or  Dick  or 
Harry. 

She.     And  I  will  say  nothing  more  of  Mrs.  Lightfoot. 

He  (dropping  in  chair  to  her  right).  Mrs.  Light- 
foot  is  a  fine  woman,  my  dear  (she  looks  up),  but  she 
is  not  my  style  at  all.  Besides,  you  know,  it  was  only 
as  a  matter  of  business,  for  the  sake  of  our  future  pros- 
pects, that  I  took  her  part. 

She  (throwing  him  skein  of  wool).  And  it  is  only 
for  the  sake  of  our  future  happiness  that  I  have  been 
playing  mine. 

He  holds  the  wool  and  she  winds  the  ball,  and  the  curtain  falls, 
leaving  them  in  the  same  position  its  rising  discovered  them  in. 


LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES. 


NEWE  YORK,  ye  1**  Aprile,  1883. 

Ye  worste  of  my  ailment  is  this,  y*  it  groweth  not 
Less  with  much  nursinge,  but  is  like  to  those  fevres 
wch  ye  leeches  Starve,  'tis  saide,  for  that  y®  more  Bloode 
there  be  in  ye  Sicke  man's  Bodie,  ye  more  foode  is  there 
for  ye  Distemper  to  feede  upon.  — And  it  is  moste  fit- 
tinge  y1  I  come  backe  to  y8  my  Journall  (wherein  I 
have  not  writt  a  Lyne  these  manye  months)  on  ye  1st  of 
Aprile,  beinge  in'  some  Sort  myne  owne  foole  and  ye 
foole  of  Love,  and  a  poore  Butt  on  whome  his  hearte 
hath  play'd  a  Sorry  tricke.  — 

For  it  is  surelie  a  strange  happenninge,  that  I,  who 
am  ofte  accompted  a  man  of  ye  Worlde,  (as  ye  Phrase 
goes,)  sholde  be  soe  Overtaken  and  caste  downe  lyke 
a  Schoole-boy  or  a  countrie  Bumpkin,  by  a  ineere 
Mayde,  &  sholde  set  to  Groaninge  and  Sighinge,  &,  for 
that  She  will  not  have  me  Sighe  to  Her,  to  Groaninge 
and  Sighinge  on  paper,  wch  is  y8  greter  Foolishnesse  in 
Me,  y*  some  one  maye  reade  it  Here-after,  who  hath 
taken  his  dose  of  ye  same  Physicke,  and  made  no  Wrye 
faces  over  it;  in  wch  case  I  doubte  I  shall  be  much 
laugh'd  at.  —  Yet  soe  much  am  I  a  foole,  and  soe  enam- 
our'd  of  my  Foolishnesse,  y*  I  have  a  sorte  of  Shame- 
full  Joye  in  tellinge,  even  to  my  Journall,  y1  I  am 
196 


LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES.  197 

mightie  deepe  in  Love  withe  ye  yonge  Daughter  of 
Mistresse  Ffrench,  and  all  maye  knowe  what  an  Angell 
is  ye  Daughter,  since  I  have  chose  Mrs-  French  for  my 
Mother  in  Lawe.  —  (Though  she  will  have  none  of  my 
choosinge.)  —  and  I  likewise  take  comforte  in  ye  Fancie, 
y*  this  poore  Sheete,  whon  I  write,  may  be  made  of  ye 
Raggs  of  some  lucklesse  Lover,  and  maye  ye  more 
readilie  drinke  up  my  complaininge  Inke.  — 

This  muche  I  have  learnt  y*  Fraunce  distilles  not, 
nor  ye  Indies  growe  not,  ye  R  erne  die  for  my  Aile.  — 
For  when  I  i8t  became  sensible  of  ye  folly  of  my  Suite, 
I  tooke  to  drynkinge  &  smoakinge,  thinkinge  to  cure 
my  minde,  but  all  I  got  was  a  head  ache,  for  fellowe  to 
my  Hearte  ache.  —  A  sorrie  Payre!  —  I  then  made 
Shifte,  for  a  while,  withe  a  Bicycle,  but  breakinge  of 
Bones  mendes  no  breakinge  of  Heartes,  and  60  myles 
a  Daye  bringes  me  no  nearer  to  a  Weddinge.  —  This 
being  Lowe  Sondaye,  (wch  my  Hearte  telleth  me  better 
than  ye  Allmanack,)  I  will  goe  to  Churche ;  wh.  I  maye 
chaunce  to  see  her.  —  Laste  weeke,  her  Eastre  bonnett 
vastlie  pleas' d  me,  beinge  most  cunninglie  devys'd  in 
ye  mode  of  oure  Grandmothers,  and  verie  lyke  to  a 
coales  Scuttle,  of  white  satine.  — 

2nd  Aprile. 

I  trust  I  make  no  more  moane,  than  is  just  for  a  man 
in  my  case,  but  there  is  small  comforte  in  lookinge  at 
ye  backe  of  a  white  Satine  bonnett  for  two  Houres,  and 
I  maye  saye  as  much.  —  Neither  any  cheere  in  Her 
goinge  out  of  ye  Churche,  &  Walkinge  downe  ye  Ave- 
nue, with  a  Puppe  by  ye  name  of  Williamson. 


198  LOVE  IJV  OLD  CLOATHES. 

4*h  Aprile. 

Because  a  man  have  a  Halt  with  a  Brimme  to  it 
like  ye  Poope-Decke  of  a  Steam-Shippe,  and  breeches 
lyke  ye  Case  of  an  umbrella,  and  have  loste  money  on 
Hindoo,  he  is  not  therefore  in  ye  beste  Societie.  —  I 
made  this  observation,  at  ye  Clubbe,  last  nighte,  in 
ye  hearinge  of  Wmson,  who  made  a  mightie  Pretence 
to  reade  y6  Sp4  of  ye  Tymes.  —  I  doubte  it  was  scurvie 
of  me,  but  it  did  me  muche  goode. 

7th  Aprile. 

Ye  manner  of  my  meetinge  with  Her  and  fallinge  in 
Love  with  Her  (for  ye  two  were  of  one  date)  is  thus. 

—  I  was  made  acquainte  withe  Her  on  a  Wednesdaie, 
at  ye  House  of  Mistresse  Varick,  ('twas  a  Reception,) 
but  did  not  hear  Her  Name,  nor  She  myne,  by  reason 
of  ye  noise,  and  of  Mrsse  Varick  having  but  lately  a 
newe  sett  of  Teethe,  of  wh.  she  had  not  yet  gott,  as  it 
were,  ye  just  Pitche  and  accordance.  —  I  sayde  to  Her 
that  ye  Weather  was  warm  for  that  season  of  ye  yeare. 

—  She  made  answer   She  thought  I  was  right,  for 
Mr  Williamson  had  saide  ye  same  thinge  to  Her  not  a 
minute  past.  —  I  tolde  Her  She  muste  not  holde  it 
origin  all  or  an  Invention  of  Wmson,  for  ye  Speache  had 
beene   manie   yeares   in   my   Familie.  —  Answer  was 
made,  She  wolde  be  muche  bounden  to  me  if  I  wolde 
maintaine  ye  Rightes  of  my  Familie,  and  lett  all  others 
from  usinge  of  my  propertie,  when  perceivinge  Her  to 
be  of  a  livelie  Witt,  I  went  about  to  ingage  her  in 
converse,  if  onlie  so  I  mightie  looke  into  Her  Eyes, 
wh.  were  of   a  coloure  suche  as  I  have  never  seene 


LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES.  199 

before,  more  like  to  a  Pansie,  or  some  such  flower, 
than  anything  else  I  can  compair  with  them.  —  Short- 
lie  we  grew  most  friendlie,  so  that  She  did  aske  me  if 
I  colde  keepe  a  Secrett.  —  I  answering  I  colde,  She 
saide  She  was  anhungered,  having  Shopp'd  all  ye  fore- 
noone  since  Breakfast.  —  She  pray'd  me  to  gett  Her 
some  Foode.  —  What,  I  ask'd.  —  She  answer'd  merrilie, 
a  Beafesteake.  —  I  tolde  Her  y*  that  Confection  was 
not  on  y*  Side-Boarde ;  but  I  presentlie  brought  Her 
such  as  there  was,  &  She  beinge  behinde  a  Screane,  I 
stoode  in  ye  waie,  so  y*  none  mighte  see  Her,  &  She 
did  eate  and  drynke  as  followeth,  to  witt  — 

iij  cupps  of  Bouillon  (wch  is  a   Tea,  or  Tisane,  of 

Beafe,  made  verie  hott  &  thinne) 
iv  Alberte  biscuit 
ij  eclairs 
i  creame-cake 

together  with  divers  small  cates  and  comfeits  whof  I 

know  not  ye  names. 

So  y*  I  was  grievously  af eared  for  Her  Digestion, 
leste  it  be  over-tax'd.  Saide  this  to  Her,  however 
addinge  it  was  my  Conceite,  y*  by  some  Processe,  lyke 
Alchemie,  whby  ye  baser  metals  are  transmuted  into 
golde,  so  ye  grosse  mortall  foode  was  on  Her  lippes 
chang'd  to  ye  fabled  Nectar  &  Ambrosia  of  ye  Gods.  — 
She  tolde  me  't  was  a  sillie  Speache,  yet  seam'd  not 
ill-pleas'd  withall.  —  She  hath  a  verie  prettie  Fashion, 
or  Tricke,  of  smilinge,  when  She  hath  made  an  end  of 
speakinge,  and  layinge  Her  finger  upon  Her  nether 


200  LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES. 

Lippe,  like  as  She  wolde  bid  it  be  stille.  —  After  some 
more  Talke,  whin  She  show'd  that  Her  Witt  was  more 
deepe,  and  Her  minde  more  seriouslie  inclin'd,  than  I 
had  Thoughte  from  our  first  Jestinge,  She  beinge  call'd 
to  go  thence,  I  did  see  Her  mother,  whose  face  I  knewe, 
&  was  made  sensible,  y*  I  had  given  my  Hearte  to  ye 
daughter  of  a  House  wh.  with  myne  owne  had  longe 
been  at  grievous  Feud,  for  ye  folly  of  oure  Atmcestres. 
—  Havinge  come  to  wh.  heavie  momente  in  my  Tale, 
I  have  no  Patience  to  write  more  to-nighte. 

22™*  Aprile. 

I  was  mynded  to  write  no  more  in  y"  journal!,  for 
verie  Shame's  sake,  y*  I  shoude  so  complayne,  lyke  a 
Childe,  whose  toie  is  taken  f™  him,  butt  (mayhapp  for 
it  is  nowe  ye  fulle  Moone,  &  a  moste  greavous  period 
for  them  y*  are  Love-strucke)  I  am  fayne,  lyke  y° 
Drunkarde  who  maye  not  abstayne  fm  his  cupp,  to  sett 
me  anewe  to  recordinge  of  My  Dolorous  mishapp. — 
When  I  sawe  Her  agayn,  She  beinge  aware  of  my 
name,  &  of  ye  division  betwixt  oure  Houses,  wolde 
have  none  of  me,  butt  I  wolde  not  be  putt  Off,  &  made 
bolde  to  question  Her,  why  She  sholde  showe  me 
euche  exceedg  Coldness.  —  She  answer'd  'twas  wel 
knowne  what  Wronge  my  Grandefather  had  done  Her 
G.father.  —  I  saide,  She  confounded  me  with  My 
G.father —  we  were  nott  ye  same  Persone,  he  beinge 
muche  my  Elder,  &  besydes  Dead.  —  She  w*  have  it, 
't  was  no  matter  for  jestinge.  —  I  tolde  Her  I  wolde  be 
resolv'd,  what  grete  Wronge  y18  was. — Ye  more  for 
to  make  Speache  thn  for  mine  owne  advertisem*,  for  I 


LOVE  IN  OLD   CLOATHE8.  201 

knewe  wel  ye  whole  Knaverie,  wh.  She  rehears'd,  Howe 
my  G.father  had  cheated  Her  G.father  of  Landes  upp 
ye  River,  with  more,  howe  my  G.father  had  impounded 
ye  Cattle  of  Hern. — I  made  answer,  'twas  foolislmesse, 
in  my  mynde,  for  ye  iiid  Generation  to  so  quarrell  over 
a  Parsel  of  rascallie  Landes,  y*  had  long  ago  beene 
solde  for  Taxes,  y*  as  to  ye  Cowes,  I  wolde  make  them 
goode,  &  thr  Produce  &  Offspringe,  if  it  tooke  ye  whole 
Washtn  Markett.  —  She  however  tolde  me  y*  ye  Ff  renche 
family  had  ye  where  wal  to  buye  what  they  lack'd  in 
Butter,  Beafe  &  Milke,  and  likewise  in  Veale,  wh. 
laste  I  tooke  muche  to  Hearte,  wh.  She  seeinge,  became 
more  gracious  &,  on  my  pleadinge,  accorded  y*  I  sholde 
have  ye  Privilege  to  speake  with  Her  when  we  next 
met.  —  Butt  neyther  then,  nor  at  any  other  Tyme 
thafter  wolde  She  suffer  me  to  visitt  Her.  So  I  was 
harde  putt  to  it  to  compass  waies  of  gettinge  to  see 
Her  at  such  Houses  as  She  mighte  be  att,  for  Kouts  or 
Feasts,  or  ye  lyke.  — 

But  though  I  sawe  Her  manie  tymes,  oure  converse 
was  ever  of  yis  Complex0,  &  ye  accursed  G.father  satt 
downe,  and  rose  upp  with  us.  —  Yet  colde  I  see  by 
Her  aspecte,  y*  I  had  in  some  sorte  Her  favoure,  &  yk 
I  mislyk'd  Her  not  so  gretelie  as  She  wd  have  me 
thinke. —  So  y4  one  dale,  ('twas  in  Januarie,  &  verie 
colde,)  I,  beinge  moste  distrackt,  saide  to  Her,  I  had 
tho't  'twolde  pleasure  Her  more,  to  be  friends  w.  a  man, 
who  had  a  knave  for  a  G.father,  yn  with  One  who  had 
no  G.father  att  alle,  lyke  Wmson  (ye  Puppe).  —  She 
made  answer,  I  was  exceedinge  fresshe,  or  some  such 
matter.  She  cloath'd  her  thoughte  in  phrase  more 


202  LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES. 

befittinge  a  Gentlewoman.  —  Att  this  I  colde  no  longer 
contayne  myself,  but  tolde  Her  roundlie,  I  lov'd  Her, 
&  'twas  my  Love  made  me  soe  unmannerlie.  —  And 
w.  yis  speache  I  att  ye  leaste  made  an  End  of  my  Un- 
certantie,  for  She  bade  me  speake  w.  Her  no  more.  — 
I  wolde  be  determin'd,  whether  I  was  Naught  to  Her. 

—  She  made  Answer  She  colde  not  justlie  say  I  was 
Naught,  seeing  y*  whever  She  mighte  bee,  I  was  One  too 
manie.  —  I  saide,  't  was  some  Comf orte,  I  had  even  a 
Place  in  Her  thoughtes,  were  it  onlie  in  Her  disfavour. 

—  She  saide,  my  Solace  was  indeede  grete,  if  it  kept 
pace  with  ye  measure  of  Her  Disfavour,  for,  in  plain 
Terms,  She  hated  me,  &  on  her  intreatinge  of  me  to 
goe,  I  went.  —  Yi8  happ'd  att  ye  house  of  Mr88  Yaricke, 
wh.  I  Ist  met  Her,  who  (M™8  Varicke)  was  for  staying 
me,  y*  I  might  eate  some  Ic'd  Cream,  butt  of  a  Truth 
I  was  chill'd  to  my  Taste  allreadie.  —  Albeit  I  after- 
wards tooke  to  walkinge  of  ye  Streets  till  near  Midnight. 

—  'Twas  as  I  saide  before  in  Januarie  &  exceedinge 
colde. 

20«*  Male. 

How  wearie  is  y"  dulle  procession  of  ye  Yeare !  For 
it  irketh  my  Soule  y*  each  Monthe  shoude  come  so 
aptlie  after  ye  Month  afore,  &  Nature  looke  so  Smug, 
as  She  had  done  some  grete  thinge.  —  Surelie  if  she 
make  no  Change,  she  hath  work'd  no  Miracle,  for  we 
knowe  wel,  what  we  maye  look  for.  —  Ye  Vine  under 
my  Window  hath  broughte  forth  Purple  Blossoms,  as 
itt  hath  eache  Springe  these  xii  Yeares. — I  wolde  have 
had  them  Redd,  or  Blue,  or  I  knowe  not  what  Coloure, 
for  I  am  sicke  of  likinge  of  Purple  a  Dozen  Springes  hi 


LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES.  203 

Order.  —  And  wh.  moste  galls  me  is  yi9,  I  knowe  howe 
yis  sadd  Rounde  will  goe  on,  &  Maie  give  Place  to 
June,  &  she  to  July,  &  onlie'my  Hearte  blossom  not 
nor  my  Love  growe  no  greener. 

2nd  June. 

I  and  my  Foolishnesse,  we  laye  Awake  last  night 
till  ye  Sunrise  gun,  wh.  was  Shott  att  4|  o'ck,  &  wh. 
beinge  hearde  in  y*  stillnesse  frn.  an  Incredible  Distance, 
seem'd  lyke  as  't  were  a  Full  Stopp,  or  Period  putt  to 
yis  Wakinge-Dreminge,  what  I  did  turne  a  newe  Leafe 
in  my  Counsells,  and  after  much  Meditation,  have 
comrnenc't  a  newe  Chapter,  wh.  I  hope  maye  leade  to 
a  better  Conclusion,  than  them  y*  came  afore.  —  For  I 
am  nowe  resolv'd,  &  havinge  begunn  wil  carry  to  an 
Ende,  y*  if  I  maie  not  over-come  my  Passion,  I  maye 
at  ye  least  over-corn  ye  Melanchollie,  &  Spleene,  borne 
yof,  &  beinge  a  Lover,  be  none  ye  lesse  a  Man.  —  To 
wh.  Ende  I  have  come  to  yis  Resolution,  to  depart  fm. 
ye  Towne,  &  to  goe  to  ye  Countrie-House  of  my  Frend, 
Will  Winthrop,  who  has  often  intreated  me,  &  has 
instantly  urg'd,  y*  I  sholde  make  him  a  Visitt.  —  And 
I  take  much  Shame  to  myself  e,  y*  I  have  not  given  him 
yis  Satisfaction  since  he  was  married,  wh.  is  nowe  ii 
Yeares.  —  A  goode  Fellowe,  &  I  minde  me  a  grete 
Burden  to  his  Frends  when  he  was  in  Love,  in  wh. 
Plight  I  mockt  him,  who  am  nowe,  I  much  feare  me, 
mockt  myselfe. 

3rd  June. 

Pack'd  my  cloathes,  beinge  Sundaye.  Ye  better  ye 
Daie,  ye  better  ye  Deede. 


204  LOVE  IN  OLD  C 'LOATHES. 

4&  June. 
Goe  downe  to  Babylon  to-daye. 

5th  June. 

Att  Babylon,  att  ye  Cottage  of  Will  Winthrop,  wh. 
is  no  Cottage,  but  a  grete  House,  Red,  w.  Verandahs, 
&  builded  in  ye  Fashn  of  Her  Maiestie  Q.  Anne.  — 
Found  a  mighty  Housef ull  of  People.  — Will,  his  Wife, 
a  verie  proper  fayre  Ladie,  who  gave  me  moste  gracious 
Reception,  M"8  Smithe,  ye  ii  Gresham  girles  (knowne 
as  yc  Titteringe  Twins),  Bob  White,  Virginia  Kinge 
&  her  Mothr,  Clarence  Winthrop,  &  ye  whole  Alexander 
Family.  —  A  grete  Gatheringe  for  so  earlie  in  y®  Sum- 
mer. —  In  ye  Afternoone  play'd  Lawne-Tenniss.  —  Had 
for  Partner  one  of  ye  Twinns,  ag81  Clarence  Winthrop 
&  ye  other  Twinn,  wh.  by  beinge  Confus'd,  I  loste  iii 
games.  —  Was  voted  a  Duffer.  —  Clarence  Winthrop 
moste  unmannerlie  merrie.  —  He  call'd  me  ye  Sad-Ey'd 
Romeo,  &  lykewise  cut  down  ye  Hammocke  whin  I  laye, 
allso  tied  up  my  Cloathes  wh.  we  were  att  Bath.  —  He 
sayde,  he  Chaw'd  them,  a  moste  barbarous  worde  for  a 
moste  barbarous  Use.  —  Wh.  we  were  Boyes,  &  he  did 
y"  thinge,  I  was  wont  to  trounce  him  Soundlie,  but 
nowe  had  to  contente  Myselfe  w.  beatinge  of  him  iii 
games  of  Billyardes  in  ye  Evg.,  &  w.  daringe  of  him 
to  putt  on  ye  Gloves  w.  me,  for  Funne,  wh.  he  mighte 
not  doe,  for  I  coude  knocke  him  colde. 

10th  June. 

Beinge  gon  to  my  Roome  somewhatt  earlie,  for  I 
found  myselfe  of  a  peevish  humour,  Clarence  came  to 
me,  and  pray4  a  few  minutes'  Speache. —  Sayde  'twas 


LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES.  205 

Love  made  him  so  Rude  &  Boyaterous,  he  was  privilie 
betroth'd  to  his  Cozen,  Angelica  Robertes,  she  whose 
Father  lives  at  Islipp,  &  colde  not  containe  Himselfe 
for  Joye. — I  sayinge,  there  was  a  Breache  in  ye  Familie, 
he  made  Answer,  't  was  true,  her  Father  &  His,  beinge 
Cozens,  did  hate  each  other  moste  heartilie,  butt  for 
him  he  cared  not  for  that,  &  for  Angelica,  She  gave 
not  a  Continentall.  —  But,  sayde  I,  Your  Consideration 
matters  mightie  Little,  syrice  ye  Governours  will  not 
heare  to  it.  —  He  answered  't  was  for  that  he  came  to 
me,  I  must  be  his  allie,  for  reason  of  oure  olde  Friendsp. 
With  that  I  had  no  Hearte  to  heare  more,  he  made  so 
Light  of  suche  a  Division  as  parted  me  &  my  Happi- 
nesse,  but  tolde  him  I  was  his  Frend,  wolde  serve  him 
when  he  had  Neede  of  me,  &  presentlie  seeing  my 
Humour,  he  made  excuse  to  goe,  &  left  me  to  write 
downe  this,  sicke  in  Mynde,  and  thinkinge  ever  of  ye 
Woman  who  wil  not  oute  of  my  Thoughtes  for  any 
change  of  Place,  neither  of  employe.  —  For  indeede  I 
doe  love  Her  moste  heartilie,  so  y4  my  Wordes  can  not 
saye  it,  nor  will  yis  Booke  containe  it.  —  So  I  wil  even 
goe  to  Sleepe,  y*  in  my  Dreames  perchaunce  my  Fancie 
maye  do  my  Hearte  better  Service. 

12th  June. 

She  is  here. — What  Spyte  is  yis  of  Fate  &  ye  alter'd 
gods!  That  I,  who  mighte  nott  gett  to  see  Her  when 
to  See  was  to  Hope,  muste  nowe  daylie  have  Her  in 
my  Sight,  stucke  lyke  a  fayre  Apple  under  olde  Tan- 
talus his  Nose.  —  Goinge  downe  to  ye  Hotell  to-day,  for 
to  gett  me  some  Tobackoe,  was  made  aware  y*  ye  Ffrench 
f amilie  had  hyred  one  of  yc  Cottages  round-abouts.  — 


206  LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES. 

'Tis  a  goodlie  Dwellinge  Without — Would  I  coude 
speake  with  as  much  Assurance  of  ye  Innsyde ! 

13th  June. 

Goinge  downe  to  ye  Hotell  againe  To-day  for  more 
Tobackoe,  sawe  ye  accursed  name  of  Wmson  on  ye 
Registre.  —  Went  about  to  a  neighboringe  Farm  & 
satt  me  downe  behynd  ye  Barne,  for  a  \  an  Houre. — 
Frighted  ye  Horned  Cattle  w.  talkinge  to  My  Selfe. 

15th  June. 

I  wil  make  an  Ende  to  yis  Businesse. — Wil  make  no 
onger  Staye  here.  —  Sawe  Her  to-day,  driven  Home 
fm.  ye  Beache,  about  4£  of  ye  After-noone,  by  Wm80n 
in  his  Dogge-Carte,  wh.  ye  Cadde  has  broughten  here. 
—  Wil  betake  me  to  ye  Boundlesse  Weste  —  Not  y* 1 
care  aught  for  ye  Boundlesse  Weste,  butt  y*  I  shal  doe 
wel  if  haplie  I  leave  my  Memourie  amg  ye  Apaches  & 
bringe  Home  my  Scalpe. 

16th  June. 

To  Fyre  Islande,  in  Winthrop's  Yacht  —  ye  Twinnes 
w.  us,  so  Titteringe  &  Choppinge  Laughter,  y*  'twas 
worse  yn  a  Flocke  of  Sandpipers.  —  Found  a  grete 
Concourse  of  people  there,  Her  amonge  them,  in  a 
Suite  of  blue,  y*  became  Her  bravelie.  —  She  swimms 
lyke  to  a  Fishe,  butt  everie  Stroke  of  Her  white  Arms 
(of  a  lovelie  Roundnesse)  cleft,  as  't  w^re  my  Hearte, 
rather  yn  ye  Water.  —  She  bow'd  to  me,  on  goinge  into 
ye  Water,  w.  muche  Dignitie,  &  agayn  on  Cominge  out, 
but  yu  Tyme  w.  lesse  Dignitie,  by  reason  of  ye  Water 
in  Her  Cloathes,  &  Her  Haire  in  Her  Eyes.  — 


LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES.  207 

17th  June. 

Was  for  goinge  awaie  To-morrow,  but  Clarence 
cominge  againe  to  my  Chamber,  &  mightilie  purswad- 
inge  of  me,  I  feare  I  am  comitted  to  a  verie  sillie 
Undertakinge.  —  For  I  am  promis'd  to  Help  him 
secretlie  to  wedd  his  Cozen.  —  He  wolde  take  no 
Deniall,  wolde  have  it,  his  Brother  car'd  Naughte, 
't  was  but  ye  Fighte  of  theyre  Fathers,  he  was  bounde 
it  sholde  be  done,  &  't  were  best  I  stoode  his  Witnesse, 
who  was  wel  lyked  of  bothe  ye  Braunches  of  ye  Family. 
—  So  't  was  agree'd,  y*  I  shal  staye  Home  to-morrowe 
fm.  ye  Expedition  to  Fyre  Islande,  feigning  a  Head- 
Ache,  (wh.  indeede  I  ineante  to  do,  in  any  Happ,  for 
I  cannot  see  Her  againe,)  &  shall  meet  him  at  ye  little 
Churche  on  ye  Southe  Roade.  —  He  to  drive  to  Islipp 
to  fetch  Angelica,  lykewise  her  Witnesse,  who  sholde 
be  some  One  of  ye  Girles,  she  hadd  not  yet  made  her 
Choice.  —  I  made  yi8  Condition,  it  sholde  not  be  either 
of  ye  Twinnes.  —  No,  nor  Bothe,  for  that  matter. — 
Inquiringe  as  to  ye  Clergyman,  he  sayde  ye  Dominie 
was  allreadie  Squar'd. 

NEWE  YORK,  YE  BUCKINGHAM  HOTELL,  19th  June. 
I  am  come  to  ye  laste  Entrie  I  shall  ever  putt  downe 
in  y8  Booke,  and  needes  must  y*  I  putt  it  downe  quick- 
lie,  for  all  hath  Happ'd  in  so  short  a  Space,  y*  my  Heade 
whirles  w.  thynkinge  of  it.  Ye  after-noone  of  Yester- 
daye,  I  set  about  Counterfeittinge  of  a  Head-Ache,  & 
so  wel  did  I  compasse  it,  y*  I  verilie  thinke  one  of  ye 
Twinnes  was  mynded  to  Stay  Home  &  nurse  me.  —  All 
havinge  gone  off,  &  Clarence  on  his  waye  to  Islipp,  I 


208  LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES* 

sett  forth  for  ye  Churche,  where  arriv'd  I  founde  it 
emptie,  w.  ye  Door  open.  —  Went  in  &  writh'd  on  y° 
hard  Benches  a  £  of  an  Houre,  when,  hearinge  a  Sounde, 
I  look'd  up  &  saw  standinge  in  ye  Door-waye,  Kathe- 
rine  Ffrench.  —  She  seem'd  muche  astonished,  saying 
You  Here !  or  ye  lyke.  —  I  made  Answer  &  sayde  y* 
though  my  Familie  were  greate  Sinners,  yet  had  they 
never  been  Excommunicate  by  ye  Churche.  —  She 
sayde,  they  colde  not  Putt  Out  what  never  was  in.  — 
While  I  was  bethynkinge  me  wh.  I  mighte  answer  to 
yis,  she  went  on,  sayinge  I  must  excuse  Her,  She  wolde 
goe  upp  in  ye  Organ-Lofte.  —  I  enquiring  what  for? 
She  sayde  to  practice  on  ye  Organ.  —  She  turn'd  verie 
Redd,  of  a  warm  Coloure,  as  She  sayde  this.  —  I  ask'd 
Do  you  come  hither  often?  She  replyinge  Yes,  I 
enquir'd  how  ye  Organ  lyked  Her.  —  She  sayde  Right 
well,  when  I  made  question  more  curiously  (for  She 
grew  more  Redd  eache  moment)  how  was  ye  Action  ? 
ye  Tone?  how  manie  Stopps?  What  She  growinge 
gretelie  Conf  us'd,  I  led  Her  into  y*  Churche,  &  show'd 
Her  y*  there  was  no  Organ,  yl  Choire  beinge  indeede  a 
Band,  of  i  Tuninge-Forke,  i  Kitt,  &  i  Horse-Fiddle.  — 
At  this  She  fell  to  Smihnge  &  Blushinge  att  one  Tyme. 
—  She  perceiv'd  our  Errandes  were  ye  Same,  &  crav'd 
Pardon  for  Her  Fibb.  —  I  tolde  Her,  If  She  came 
Thither  to  be  Witness  at  her  Frend's  Weddinge,  'twas 
no  greate  Fibb,  'twolde  indeede  be  Practice  for  Her. 
—  This  havinge  a  rude  Sound,  I  added  I  thankt  ye 
Starrs  y*  had  bro't  us  Together.  She  sayde  if  ye  Starrs 
appoint'd  us  to  meete  no  oftener  yn  this  Couple  shoudo 
be  Wedded,  She  was  wel  content.  This  cominge  on 


LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES.  209 

me  lyke  a  last  Buffett  of  Fate,  that  She  shoude  so 
despitefully  intreate  me,  I  was  suddenlie  Seized  with 
so  Sorrie  a  Humour,  &  withal  so  angrie,  y*  I  colde 
scarce  Containe  myself e,  but  went  &  Sat  downe  neare 
ye  Doore,  lookinge  out  till  Clarence  shd.  come  w.  his 
Bride.  —  Looking  over  my  Sholder,  I  sawe  y*  She 
wente  fm.  Windowe  to  Windowe  within,  Pluckinge  ye 
Blossoms  fm.  ye  Vines,  &  settinge  them  in  her  Girdle. 
—  She  seem'd  most  tall  and  faire,  &  swete  to  look 
uponn,  &  itt  Anger' d  me  ye  More.  —  Mean  whiles,  She 
discours'd  pleasantlie,  asking  me  manie  questions,  to 
the  wh.  I  gave  but  shorte  and  churlish  answers.  She 
ask'd  Did  I  nott  Knowe  Angelica  Roberts  was  Her 
best  Frend?  How  longe  had  I  knowne  of  ye  Betrothal? 
Did  I  thinke  'twolde  knitt  y6  House  together,  &  Was 
it  not  Sad  to  see  a  Familie  thus  Divided? —  I  answer'd 
Her,  I  wd.  not  robb  a  Man  of  ye  precious  Righte  to 
Quarrell  with  his  Relations.  —  And  then,  with  medi- 
tatinge  on  ye  goode  Lucke  of  Clarence,  &  my  owne 
harde  Case,  I  had  suche  a  sudden  Rage  of  peevishness 
y*  I  knewe  scarcelie  what  I  did.  —  Soe  when  she  ask'd 
me  merrilie  why  I  turn'd  my  Backe  on  Her,  I  made 
Reply  I  had  turn'd  my  Backe  on  much  Follie.  —  Wh. 
was  no  sooner  oute  of  my  Mouthe  than  I  was  mightilie 
Sorrie  for  it,  and  turninge  aboute,  I  perceiv'd  She  was 
in  Teares  &  weepinge  bitteiiie.  What  my  Hearte 
wolde  holde  no  More,  &  I  rose  upp  &  tooke  Her  in  my 
arms  &  Kiss'd  &  Comforted  Her,  She  makinge  no 
Denyal,  but  seeminge  greatlie  to  Neede  such  Solace, 
wh.  I  was  not  Loathe  to  give  Her.  —  Whiles  we  were 
at  This,  onlie  She  had  gott  to  Smilinge,  &  to  sayinge 


210  LOVE  IN  OLD  CLOATHES. 

of  Things  which  even  y"18  paper  shal  not  knowe,  came 
in  y*  Dominie,  sayinge  He  judg'd  We  were  the  Couple 
he  came  to  Wed.  —  With  him  y6  Sexton  &  ye  Sexton's 
Wife.  —  My  swete  Kate,  alle  as  rosey  as  Venus's  Nape, 
was  for  Denyinge  of  yis,  butt  I  wolde  not  have  it,  & 
sayde  Yes.  —  She  remonstrating  w.  me,  privilie,  I 
tolde  Her  She  must  not  make  me  Out  a  Liar,  y*  to 
Deceave  ye  Man  of  God  were  a  greavous  Sinn,  y1 1  had 
gott  Her  nowe,  &  wd.  not  lett  her  Slipp  from  me,  & 
did  soe  Talke  Her  Downe,  &  w.  such  Strengths  of 
joie,  y*  allmost  before  She  knewe  it,  we  Stoode  upp,  & 
were  Wed,  w.  a  Ringe  (tho'  She  Knewe  it  nott)  wh. 
belonged  to  My  G  father.  (Him  y*  Cheated  Hern.)  — 

Wh  was  no  sooner  done,  than  in  came  Clarence  & 
Angelica,  &  were  Wedded  in  theyre  Turn.  —  The 
Clergyman  greatelie  surprised,  but  more  att  ye  Large- 
ness of  his  Fee. 

This  Businesse  being  Ended,  we  fled  by  y6  Trayne  of 
4|  o'cke,  to  yis  Place,  where  we  wait  till  ye  Bloode  of 
all  y*  Ffrenches  have  Tyme  to  coole  downe,  for  y6  wise 
Mann  who  meeteth  bis  Mother  in  Lawe  y6  Ist  tyme,  wil 
meete  her  when  she  is  Milde.  — 

And  so  I  close  yi8  Journal!,  wh.,  tho'  for  ye  moste 
Parte  'tis  but  a  peevish  Scrawle,  hath  one  Page  of 
Golde,  whon  I  have  writt  ye  laste  strange  Happ  whby  I 
have  layd  Williamson  by  ye  Heeles  &  found  me  y8 
sweetest  Wife  y*  ever 

stopp'd  a  man's  Mouthe  w.  kisses  for  writinge  of 
Her  Prayses. 


A  brilliant  series." — Boston  Courier. 


Stories  by 

American  Authors 


MESSRS.  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS  have  in  hand  a 
publication  of  unusual  importance  and  interest,  in  the  volumes 
of  "  Stories  by  American  Authors,"  of  which  they  have  just 
begun  the  issue. 

The  books  carry  their  sufficient  explanation  in  their  brief 
title.  They  are  collections  of  the  more  noteworthy  short 
stories  contributed  by  American  writers  during  the  last 
twenty-five  years — and  especially  during  the  last  ten — either 
to  periodicals  or  publications  now  for  some  reason  not  easily 
accessible. 

It  is  surprising  that  such  a  collection  has  not  been  at- 
tempted earlier,  in  view  of  the  extraordinarily  large  propor- 
tion of  strong  work  in  American  fiction  which  has  been  cast 
in  the  form  of  the  short  story. 

If  the  publishers  of  the  present  collection  are  right,  it  will 
not  only  show  the  remarkably  large  number  of  contemporary 
American  authors  who  have  won  general  acknowledgment 
of  their  excellence  in  this  field,  but  will  surprise  most  readers 
by  the  number  of  capital  and  striking  stories  by  less  frequent 
writers,  which  are  scattered  through  our  recent  periodical 
literature. 

In  England,  in  the  well-known  "  Tales  from  Blackwood," 
the  experiment  was  tried  of  publishing  such  stories  taken  from 
a  single  magazine  within  a  limited  time.  But  the  noticeable 
feature  of  the  present  volumes  will  be  seen  to  be  the  extent 
of  the  field  from  which  they  draw,  and  their  fully  representa- 
tive character. 


Cloth,  i6mo,  50  cents  each. 


"  Literary  relishes  that  -will  give  as  good  seasoning  as  one  could 
wish  to  one's  moments  of  leisure  or  of  dullness." — Boston  Advertiser. 


Stories  by 

American  Authors 


The  following  is  an  alphabetical  list  of  the  stories  contained  in  the  first 
six  volumes  of  the  series  which  are  noiv  ready  : 

Balacchi    Brothers,    The.      By    Rebecca    Harding    Davis. 
Vol.  I. 

Brother    Sebastian's     Friendship.      By    Harold    Frederic. 
Vol.  VI. 

Denver  Express,  The.     By  A.  A.  Hayes.     Vol.  VI. 
Dinner  Party,  A.     By  John  Eddy.     Vol.  II. 

Documents  in  the  Case,  The.     By  Brander  Matthews  and 
H.  C.  Bunner.     Vol.  I. 

End  of  New  York,  The.     By  Park  Benjamin.     Vol.  V. 
Friend  Barton's  Concern.  By  Mary  Hallock  Foote.  Vol.  IV. 
Heartbreak  Cameo,  The.    By  Lizzie  W.  Champney.  Vol.  VI. 
Inspired  Lobbyist,  An.     By  J.  W.  De  Forest.     Vol.  IV. 
Light  Man,  A.     By  Henry  James.     Vol.  V. 
Lost  in  the  Fog.     By  Noah  Brooks.     Vol.  IV. 
Love  in  Old  Cloathes.     By  H.  C.  Bunner.     Vol.  IV. 

Martyr  to   Science,  A.      By   Mary   Putnam    Jacobi,  M.D. 
Vol.  II. 

Memorable  Murder,  A.     By  Celia  Thaxter.     Vol.  III. 


"These  volumes  are  as  sure  to  delight  and  please  the  general 
reader  as  to  satisfy  the  exactions  of  the  critical."—  Washington 
National  Tribune. 


Miss  Grief.     By  Constance  Fenimore  Woolson.     Vol.  IV. 
Miss  Eunice's  Glove.     By  Albert  Webster.    Vol.  VI. 

Misfortunes  of  Bro'  Thomas  Wheatley,  The.      By   Lina 
Redwood  Fairfax.     Vol.  VI. 

Mount    of    Sorrow,    The.     By   Harriet    Prescott   Spofford. 
Vol.  II. 

Mrs.  Knollys.     By  "J.  S.  of  Dale."    Vol.11. 
Operation  in  Money,  An.     By  Albert  Webster.     Vol.  I. 
Poor  Ogla-Moga.     By  David  D.  Lloyd.     Vol.  III. 
Sister  Silvia.     By  Mary  Agnes  Tincker.    Vol.  II. 
Spider's  Eye,  The.     By  Lucretia  P.  Hale.    Vol.  III. 

Story   of  the    Latin    Quarter,   A.      By  Frances   Hodgson 
Burnett.     Vol.  III. 

Tachypomp,  The.     By  E.  P.  Mitchell.     Vol.  V. 
Thirty  Pieces,  One  of  the.     By  W.  H.  Bishop.     Vol.  I. 
Transferred  Ghost,  The.     By  Frank  R.  Stockton.     Vol.  II. 
Two  Buckets  in  a  Well.     By  N.  P.  Willis.     Vol.  IV. 

Two    Purse    Companions.     By   George   Parsons    Lathrop. 
Vol.  III. 

Venetian  Glass.     By  Brander  Matthews.     Vol.  III. 

Village  Convict,  The.     By  C.  H.  White.    Vol.  VI. 

Who  was  She  ?    By  Bayard  Taylor.     Vol.  I. 

Why  Thomas  was  Discharged.    By  George  Arnold.   Vol.  V. 

Yatil.     By  F.  D.  Millet.    Vol.  V. 


The  Theatres  of  Paris. 

By  BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 

With     illustrations     by    Sarah-Bernhardt,    Carolus    Duran,    Madrazo, 
Gaucherel,  and  others. 


One  "Vol/urne,  16mo,  cloth, 


14  An  interesting,  gossipy,  yet  instructive  little  book." — Academy  (London.) 
44  A  very  readable    and    discriminating    account  of   the  leading  theatres  and 
actors  of  the  French  capital." — Christian  Union,  (New  York.) 

44  Mr.  Matthews  has  chosen  a  subject  of  great  interest  to  most  people,  and  he 
has  the  additional  advantage  of  knowing  what  he  is  writing  about.  The  chap- 
ters on  the  Grand  Opera  and  on  the  Theatre  Franc.ais,  the  two  most  perfect  es- 
tablishments of  the  kind  in  the  world,  are  full  of  valuable  details  and  statis- 
tics."—Nation. 


French  Dramatists  of 
the  XlXth  Century. 

By  BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 
1  Vol.,    crown    8vo,    vellum    cloth,    gilt   top,    $2.OO. 

14  Mr.  Brander  Matthews's  studies  are  made  with  intelligence  and  conscien- 
tiousness. The  characteristics  of  the  work  of  noted  stage-writers,  from  Hugo 
to  M.  Zola,  are  carefully  presented  in  an  entertaining  way,  while  the  personal- 
ity and  life  of  each  are  not  neglected.  There  is  no  book  from  which  the  Eng- 
lish reader  can  obtain  so  trustworthy  a  view  of  the  contemporary  French 
drama,  and  none  surely  in  which  a  theme  so  complex  is  so  pleasantly  unfolded. 
The  analysis  of  the  realistic  school,  its  methods  and  aims,  is,  in  spite  of  its 
brevity,  an  excellent  thing,  excellently  well  done.  The  volume  is  made  up  in 
a  manner  very  creditable  to  the  scholarly  tastes  of  the  author.  A  chronology 
of  the  French  drama  is  prefixed,  there  are  valuable  notes  and  references, 
largely  bibliographical,  and  a  good  index." — Boston  Traveller. 


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conductor,  who  alone  may  open  the  way  to  Arcady,  the  poet 
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great  poetic  and  dramatic  passion  of  life.  His  poems  are 
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X5 


